Greg and Debbie Mayer have a message for their 17-year-old son, Gregory, who ran away Friday and may be attempting a 2,100-mile cross-country journey back to New Jersey with no phone, ID or money in his pocket.
“If he wants to come back home, we’ll take him back home and try something different,” Greg Mayer said Thursday morning in a phone interview from Lehi, Utah, a Salt Lake City suburb where he and his wife last saw their son six days ago.
Last year the Mayers, residents of the Basking Ridge section of Bernards, enrolled their son at Discovery Ranch, a special home in Mapleton, Utah, designed for boys with learning and behavioral issues. Gregory apparently did not want to be there, but his father said he never realized how much his son wanted to leave.
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“You try to do the right thing for your kids. They don’t come with manuals. This reaction we didn’t expect,” he said. “If he doesn’t want to be there that much, we want to find him and take him home.”
The couple has been playing detective, visiting any shelter they can find, leafleting businesses with missing-person fliers, sharing updates on Facebook and hoping the Utah media picks up the story. But that hasn’t been easy, Mayer said, because authorities had been unwilling until late Thursday afternoon to disseminate the news to the media because runaway cases are so common in Salt Lake City.
“We’re running out of options. We’re trying to figure out what to do,” Mayer said.
The couple went to Utah on Feb 19 to visit their son for the weekend. On Friday they took him to Lehi to see a movie at the Thanksgiving Point theater. He excused himself to go to the rest room and never returned, Lehi Police Lt. Darren Paul said Thursday.
Paul said Gregory was reported missing at 7:37 p.m. Authorities are treating this as a runaway case and Gregory’s information has been entered into a national police database.
While Gregory may have left his parents, the 5-foot-11, 140-pound teen with brown hair and blue eyes hasn’t disappeared without a trace.
On Monday he stopped at a Mormon temple in Salt Lake City, but security there couldn’t detain him, Mayer said.
On Monday the couple said they got a call from a Mexican restaurant owner in Orem, Utah, 12 miles south of Lehi, who said that Gregory had been at the restaurant late Saturday night and may have tried to call his father. The man, however, did not know he was missing until he saw a flier.
The restaurant owner said that the young man tried to dial a number with a 201 area code, but the restaurant’s phone doesn’t allow long-distance calls, Debbie Mayer wrote on her Facebook page. The owner said the man walked out of the restaurant looking tired.
“We have not received any other calls. So we are back to wondering where he is and if he is still OK. Please dear God keep him safe!!!” she wrote on her Facebook.
Greg Mayer said he believes his son might be afraid that police will try to send him back to Discovery Ranch, so he’s “spooked.”
“Salt Lake City is an interesting place. A lot of homeless people come here because people are fairly giving. We are wondering if he may have raised the money for a bus ticket,” he said. “I think there also is a lot of bad people out there. I’ve offered a reward, so I’m hoping that someone would rather collect the award than take advantage of this kid.”
Greg Mayer asks anyone with information to call him at 201-805-3867 or contact their local police department.
