Hailey Mullins

You don't know who I am. And that's not really important. I'm not doing this for recognition, and I'm not doing this for acclaim. I'm doing this, because there has to be some chance some of these people are still out there, lost, maybe wondering if they'll be reunited with the people they were taken away from.

You know how, sometimes, you find things in the most unexpected places that prompt you to act in ways you never thought you could?

Would you believe that I found an entire box of missing persons reports and newspaper clippings in my grandfather's attic? They date all the way back to the 1970s, and they're all from Laurel, Maryland. All local, an entire box of them.

My grandad was a private investigator, he usually handled missing children reports. I lived with him until I turned 18, and then I moved in with a friend from high school. I just got a call last week that Grandad was dead... he'd spent a week in Crownsville, a psych ward, talking about a gentleman and a girl that hung herself. The doctors think he was having flashbacks of his father and his sister, who hung herself in August, 1957.

Some of these are really weird, so let's go with the best bets first. Numbers have been redacted, and the names of the publications have been ommited (as well as the headlines), because the point is to look for these kids, not to feed the trolls with publications and grieving parents ripe for prank-calling.

July 7, 1998. Lee's Market at Brock Bridge Road in Laurel, Maryland.

'Jennifer Mullins, mother of two, reported her daughter, 5-year-old Hailey, missing after using the restroom while at Lee's Market. She claimed to be purchasing sodas for her children and a six-pack of Budweiser for herself for a coworker's fortieth birthday party.

When questioned, Mullins revealed that she had left her children in the car, that it was running, and that it was unlocked. The store clerk admitted that he was going to call the police, but that a tall man in a well-pressed suit was standing near the vehicle. He had assumed the individual was a family friend or a coworker, if not the father.'

If you've met someone named Hailey Mullins, or if you've got any information about what happened that day, please leave a comment so that we can talk. There's a young woman out there, somewhere, wondering if her mother and brother even remember her.