The case involving Zahara Barker, the young girl missing in the foothills of North Carolina, has really been tugging at my heart lately. Part of the reason for this is obvious – I live in North Carolina, and of course our whole state has been in a media frenzy about the case, with each night’s news turning up some new clue or piece of evidence that’s been linked to her disappearance in some way. Not only that, but the girl’s health issues that have been brought up in the case, particularly her bone cancer, have been enough to stir the compassion of everyone I have spoken to about the case.
But this situation resonated with me on a personal level. Years ago when I was working as a police officer, there was an arson attack in a community that I worked. Tragically, several children were lost in the attack, and the pain of that loss has left an indelible mark on my heart even to this day, shaping me into the investigator that I am today. Even now, no longer working as a police officer, I still sometimes find myself seeing crimes from the perspective of the victim.
Photo Courtesy of WRAL.com
It was February of 1996, and I was the Crime Prevention Officer in Heritage Park here in Raleigh, North Carolina. Working there, I spent more time in that community than I did in my own. It was my job there to get to know the residence, building relationships so that I could be an ally to the community rather than an outsider. It was truly one of the best jobs in my law enforcement career as I found myself tearing down walls, gaining friends, and genuinely making a difference by my efforts there. But when that attack came, it also turned into one of the most painful jobs.
One of the children in the neighborhood, a nine-year-old girl by the name of Chastity, had asked to attend an event I was chaperoning just the day before. I remember telling her that since she was too young to attend, she and I would do something special the next day to make up for it. But Chastity did not get to do anything with me that next day, because during the night her apartment building was struck by an arsonist. I will never forget getting that call, at my home that cold winter’s night, to respond to my community. The ground was slick with ice as I looked up at those great billows of smoke pouring out of the apartment, just praying that all the children had made it out safely. Chastity especially – in many ways she felt like a daughter to me. But Chastity, along with three of her siblings, was lost in that fire.
Zahara Barker is not my daughter; I have never even met her in person. But the pain of losing even those children who weren’t my own has stayed with me all my life. If I could, I would go out there to Hickory and find her myself.
