Darryl Jones doesn’t have plans to celebrate Mother’s Day. At a time when households are honoring the maternal bonds of the family unit, Jones, the boys basketball coach of city-power Satellite Academy in the Bronx, which has won three of the past five city championships in the PSAL’s Alternative League, has a more pressing matter to deal with.
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Jones’ daughter is missing, and hasn’t been seen by her family or heard from since April 27. Stevie Bates, a 19-year-old former cheerleader at the Bronx High School of Science, with an infectious smile and shoulder-length blond dreadlocks, was traveling cross-country with a group of friends she met through the Occupy Wall Street movement when she disappeared. Bates was last observed boarding a bus in Pittsburgh destined for New York, where she was supposed to arrive on April 28.
Vivian Bates, who is married to Darryl, last spoke with her daughter on the phone on April 27. According to Vivian, Stevie was at a Greyhound bus station in Pittsburgh during a layover. The time was 7:52 p.m. Stevie hasn’t been heard from since.
“That was her last layover,” Vivian told the Daily News. “I asked her if she wanted me to pick her up at the bus station (back in Manhattan) and she said ‘no.’ She was going to Brooklyn to meet up with some friends. But she never got there. She was coming home later that day.”
That was the last time Vivian Bates and Jones heard from their daughter, who is a 5-6, African-American female, weighs 120 pounds and is distinguished by her dreadlocks and a nose and belly piercing.
Sunday is Mother’s Day and Darryl says the family doesn’t have any plans to commemorate the occasion, except to keep looking for clues to find their daughter.
“It’s just a very tough situation right now,” said Jones, who coaches in the PSAL’s alternative league, or “second-chance league” for at-risk kids who have struggled at mainstream high schools around the city. Jones also coaches the Long Island Lightning AAU basketball team. “We’re just trying to get through this right now.”
The family filed a missing person’s report with the City of Yonkers Police Department on May 9, according to Eugene Marron, a police dispatcher for the Yonkers Communications Department. Jones and Bates, who live in Yonkers, have received kernels of information in the days since Stevie disappeared. Police in Pittsburgh contacted Vivian on Friday with information that Stevie was captured on video boarding a bus in that city on April 27 during a layover, Vivian said, apparently at about the same Vivian last spoke to her daughter.
“It’s hard,” said Stevie’s older sister, Sherina Bates, who has posted missing person flyers around her Crown Heights neighborhood and spread the word of her disappearance through social media. “It’s not going to be a happy Mother’s Day unless we find her.”
If a child is under 10 and is reported missing, then the police conduct an all-out search, according to Lt. Phillip Collins of the Yonkers police. But since Stevie is 19, the hunt for clues isn’t as frantic, with a “teletype” bulletin sent out to local and state authorities.
“If she’s 19, she’s an adult and there’s no indication that her life is in jeopardy or she has a mental incapacity, there’s not going to be an all-out search,” Collins said on Saturday. “People go missing on their own volition all the time. She’s 19, she’s an adult. She really doesn’t have to abide by her parents’ rules.”
Vivian described her daughter as a homebody, incredibly outgoing, and quick to make friends. She rejected the idea that Stevie may have run away because of a family grievance. ”We were good, good friends,” Vivian said. “She would never do that.”
Stevie was heavily involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, living in a tent in Zuccotti Park from September of last year until the camp was raided in November, Vivian said. She attended Hunter College last year but didn’t register for this semester and was applying to colleges for the fall. She was interested in studying architecture. “In fact she has a couple of applications at home that are waiting for her,” Vivian said
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The family purchased a new home in Yonkers on March 1 and was redoing the floors of the house in early April. Stevie was supposed to stay with friends in Brooklyn for a few days while the house was touched up. A week later, on April 19, Vivian said she got a call from Stevie from Virginia, saying she had gone on a road trip to Northern California with three friends she knew from Occupy Wall Street. Stevie lost her cell phone along the way so Vivian kept in contact through a friend’s phone her daughter was traveling with.
Around April 23, Stevie told her mother their car broke down in North Carolina and they would be taking a bus to Arkansas. On April 26, Stevie had resolved to come home and boarded a Greyhound bus from Hot Springs, Ark. that was scheduled to arrive in New York City on April 28 at 5:40 a.m., Vivian said.
Vivian said she has been in contact with the Pittsburgh Police Department, speaking with a Det. Colleen Brust. On Saturday, Brust, who works in the missing person’s bureau, could not be reached for comment, though a Det. Bryan Sellers, who deals with sexual assault cases, said the missing person’s report involving Stevie Bates is in the Pittsburgh police system.
On Wednesday, Vivian went to Zuccotti Park, armed with a picture of Stevie to see if anyone knew of her whereabouts.
“My daughter is missing 14 days now,”Vivian said on Friday. “And this is not unlike her to at least be somewhere where I can find her or where her friends know where she was. I don’t know what to think. I haven’t heard anything.”
For any information on the whereabouts of Stevie Bates, please contact Vivian Bates at 646-345-3410.
