Teens also in search of perfect love?

I realize the parallels aren’t perfect. But when I heard the story this week of a pair of teenagers from Michigan who were found in the Lakeview neighborhood this week after having run away from home together, I couldn’t help but recall the tale of Scott and Carolyn Swanson.

They pop into my memory occasionally, because they were (for a few months) a big deal for the Chicago Police. They were a missing couple who, for awhile, it was feared had run up against foul play.

IN REALITY, THEY were in Southern California – having run off together so they could live  what they hoped would be a cozy lifestyle. Searching for “perfect love,” as I recall Carolyn saying once the couple turned up.

It seems the couple – who were students about to graduate from Wheaton College back when they disappeared in spring of 1988 – wanted to marry. They went up to Wisconsin, where they were wed. Then, then went to Southern California, where they lived for a couple of months under assumed names.

Back then, I was a police beat reporter for the now-defunct City News Bureau. I can remember being the reporter who, every day, was contacting Chicago P.D. to see if they had come up with any new traces about what might have become of the couple.

As I recall, police figured out within one day of the couple being reported missing that they had eloped. Then, the trail went cold.

I REMEMBER DAY after day of doing stories that reported on the various tactics used by Chicago police to try to find out about the couple – only to have those tactics turn up new information.

In the end, the couple was found when they wanted to be found – which was when their money ran out. They wrote home, and the parents went out to California to get them.

I still recall the sight of Scott Swanson being interviewed live from California by Chicago television stations (no, City News didn't send me out there, a trip to California Avenue was exotic for their budget), talking about the life he and bride Carolyn had during those two months. I also recall hearing from police sources about the chewing out that high-ranking Chicago police officials gave the couple upon their return for just running off without leaving any kind of word of their whereabouts.

Since then, the couple has lived the past quarter-of-a-century in relative anonymity. They’re not the kind of people who keep popping up into the public eye.

WHICH COULD BE the eventual fate of Braxton Wood and Jayden Thomas. They’re the pair of 14-year-olds who were found in a Ford Explorer parked near a gas station in the Lakeview neighborhood.

They wanted to be together. They had parents who didn’t like the idea of them spending so much time together (which is a difference, because I seem to recall the Swanson and MacLean families approving of each other).

So, they took the SUV belonging to Braxton’s parents and drove to Chicago, where it seems they have spent the past couple of weeks “roughing it” in the streets not far from Wrigley Field.

The Chicago Tribune reported that a man recognized the couple from television news reports about their disappearance. He then contacted police, who were the ones who approached the van with covered windows (one smashed from when the couple locked themselves out) and found the couple on Sunday.

BY THAT POINT, they were ready to be found. They were hungry and didn’t have money to fill up the gas tank any longer.

Police literally gave them Egg McMuffins, before contacting their parents in Michigan to let them know their kids had been found.

I’m sure the disappearance of Braxton and Jayden is a bigger deal from a legal perspective than that of Scott and Carolyn 25 years ago because of the age – these were both minors who were roaming the streets.

Admittedly, they weren’t in the inner city. But they are both fortunate that they didn’t suffer serious harm while in Chicago. Just think of the negative publicity Chicago would be getting these days if something had happened to them.

PERSONALLY, IT WOULD be best if the teenage couple winds up with the same ultimate fate as the Swansons – they have just receded into the woodwork of our society.

They’re not constantly in the news. They got on with their lives. Let’s hope Braxton and Jayden do the same.

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I’m surprised it doesn’t happen often

As I write this, I don’t know if criminal charges are going to be sought against either the mother or the aunt (if not both) of a 2-year-old girl who got left behind at a Chuck E. Cheese franchise on the Northwest Side.

As I understand it, the mother thought her daughter was going to leave with her sister (the girl’s aunt), while the sister thought the girl’s mother was keeping her daughter with her.

IT COMES DOWN to confusion. Unless there’s some sort of unknown factor that somebody is going out of their way to hide, it doesn’t seem that anyone was going out of their way to abandon this particular child, whom both of the metro newspapers say is named Kayla.

The fact that caught my attention in all these accounts was that the way in which police found the family of the girl was because they came forward. They openly identified themselves to police, and rather promptly.

The girl was discovered abandoned at the Chuck E. Cheese when it was closing at about 10:30 p.m. Saturday night. The girl’s mother contacted police Sunday morning when she learned that her daughter wasn’t with her sister, but was instead being written about on the Internet as a missing child.

Hence, Sunday became a very tense day for that particular family. Several members had to answer police questions and try to figure out if they needed legal representation to deal with the possiblity of criminal charges.

IT’S NO JOKE. Child abandonment is the type of charge that will stir up resentment amongst the public, and not just because Kayla was abandoned in a place as tacky as a Chuck E. Cheese. Many people are going to be quick to jump to conclusions that these people are horrid excuses for humanity who deserve the worst punishments possible.

Reading the public comments posted on various Internet sites about this incident, it already has started up. There are those who are convinced the girl should be removed from her family and put in foster care – figuring that even the least-caring foster parents (who are doing it for the extra money they receive from the state to cover the kid’s expenses) would be better than people who can’t keep track of where their kid is.

I just don’t buy it. Like I wrote earlier, these people seem to have come forward rather quickly, and their top priority appears to be getting their daughter/niece back (although as I write this, Kayla remains in the custody of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services).

It’s just that I have noticed the ability of kids to just wander off at the most inopportune moments. I know there once was a time I have watched my own niece, only to discover that she wasn’t physically where she had said she would be.

THE MOST SERIOUS incident I recall was a time when my then-5-year-old niece (she’s now 7) told me she was going to visit the house of one neighboring kid (who lived on the same block), but instead chose to visit another neighboring kid who lived a couple of houses away (but also on the same block).

That incident took me about two minutes to square away once I discovered the discrepancy. It ultimately ended without incident. But it means there was those few minutes when I couldn’t specifically account for my niece’s whereabouts.

Did I commit a criminal act on that day a couple of years ago? I’d hate to think so.

I suppose it all depends just how strict we want to be about enforcing a definition of child abandonment.

IF ANYTHING, MY problem with this incident would be that the girl (who supposedly is about 2 years old) was able to wander off in a Chuck E. Cheese and get lost amidst the noise of one of those places.

I couldn’t envision letting the kid wander away to where it would be possible for the mother and the aunt to not have her there physically in front of them, which would have made it next to impossible for the two to think that the girl was going to leave the restaurant with the other.

But even if you want to believe that such behavior is bad, I don’t know that I think it warrants a criminal charge.

I’d like to think our criminal justice system is already too clogged with cases to be bothered with this. But then again, I am realistic enough to know that when a 2-year-old gets involved, rationality often gets thrown out the window. Because there will be those people who will screech and scream for someone’s head as an example of “justice” being served.

IF THERE IS an appropriate punishment for this so-called offense, I think the mother and aunt ought to be sentenced to have to spend an entire week at a Chuck E. Cheese themselves – no kids along.

Perhaps the concept of having to survive off of that cheap (in quality, not in price) pizza and cope with headaches from the racket made by all those aging, tacky videogames will be suffering enough to make them watch their kid a little bit closer next time.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Police are calling it a “miscommunication,” but it remains to be seen how long it (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/02/toddler-abandoned-chuck-e-cheese-north-side-chicago.html) will be until Kayla is returned to her mother, and if the mother will be cleared of any (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2074980,girl-abandoned-chuck-e-cheese-022810.article) wrongdoing.