How important does a person have to be for their community to notice when he disappears? She had seen footage of helicopters taking highly trained search teams into the mountains to find lost hikers.
A well-connected family can get a photo of a missing person to thousands on social media, maybe even a spot on the news. Would anyone ever give a second thought to Chino, she wondered — a year-old with a criminal record and a history of drug abuse, who drifted between motel rooms and the back of a truck?
His search party amounted to a couple of people taping up flyers at the Salt Lake City Family Dollar where he worked. Salt Lake City police get at least a couple of missing-person reports each week, said Sgt.
Greg Wilking. To justify an extensive search, he said, the person has to be considered "endangered. But for people on the margins — the poor and homeless, especially — the criteria for "endangered" may be paradoxically hard to meet.
It's not clear whether an aggressive, immediate search would have saved Chino. He disappeared early May 31, not long after his coworkers on night shift at the Family Dollar on West and North Temple dropped him off at a motel where Trujillo and his girlfriend were staying, said his manager, Chanel Lankford. Chino lived much of his life in motels, and his early childhood set the stage for years of turmoil. Trujillo was just 17 when she came down with appendicitis and doctors discovered she was pregnant.
