A samaritan utility

The other day I updated a case that had a detail I’d never seen before: the woman, Mary Joetta Roderick, was reported missing by her phone company.

It’s not all that uncommon for adults to not get reported missing for months, particularly if their children are taking the opportunity to cash their checks, which Mary’s son was. But usually in such cases, the police are alerted by friends, neighbors or extended family members. I’ve never heard of a utility company doing it.

She was last seen in December 1994. A few months later her phone company contacted the cops to say she’d always paid her bill promptly, but she had not paid it in months and the balance had grown to $3,500 (was her son calling 900-number sex lines?). I suppose the company probably tried to contact her themselves and couldn’t. Anyway, they thought something might have happened to her.

So the cops went to her house on a welfare check and found her son, and it started to unravel. Partially, anyway. They’ve never found her or charged anyone in her disappearance.

The cops haven’t given up, though. They conducted a search for her just this month.

Dunno what’s going on with the Charley Project’s Facebook page

Several days ago, literally overnight, my post reach on the Charley Project’s Facebook page went from hundreds or thousands of people per post to, like, five people per post. This on a page with over 16,000 likes, and after my FreeThink video.

No comments on the posts anymore either. I miss interacting with my Facebook viewers.

I’m not happy but I have no idea what to do about this. I mean, besides buy Facebook ads to encourage new people to come. I don’t want to do that. I already paid actual money for a graphics person to make new graphics for the Facebook page so it could finally catch up with last spring’s site redesign.

I’m hoping the Facebook algorithms are just messed up and my viewers haven’t all made a mass exodus. I barely even know what an algorithm is, never mind how they work.

In the process of poking around on Facebook, however, I did discover someone set up a Charley Project Facebook group that I was unaware of. The group is actually five years old by now and doesn’t seem to be very active (0 posts in the last month) but I thought I’d just say here that I did not give permission for it, never mind endorse it, and don’t even know the person who started it.