Hope: A Memoir of Survival in Cleveland (37 page)

“I didn’t have the courage to deal with it,” he says. “I just kind of quit. I didn’t have the strength to confront it.” He leans in close and looks me right in the eyes: “Like you do.” Then he turns to Gina: “And you do.”

I think to myself that it’s amazing how he got over his pain and accomplished so much. If he can do it, so can I. He was twenty-nine when that accident happened, and I’m twenty-eight. I have a new life ahead. And he’s right: After what I’ve been through, I can face anything. He’s not afraid to cry, and I don’t have to be either.

We talk for about forty-five minutes, and the vice president says he has to go, but he wants to treat us to lunch. So one of his aides escorts us to the White House Mess, which is not a mess at all. It’s a fancy dining room in the basement. It’s busy at lunchtime, and there are a couple of senators eating at the next table. I’m taking pictures of everything, including the presidential seal pressed into the butter—who thinks of something like that?

The room is so pretty, and we laugh and joke and sip bubbly water from crystal glasses, eating club sandwiches with white linen napkins.

Gina

The ballroom at the Ritz is absolutely huge.

More than five hundred people are sitting at round tables for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s dinner, all dressed in suits and fancy dresses. We’re at a table near the front, listening to speakers, including two teenagers who helped rescue a little girl abducted by some creep in a van in Pennsylvania. I wish they had been around when we were taken.

We go onstage last, and John Walsh, the host of
America’s Most Wanted
, whose son was kidnapped and murdered, introduces us. I’m so nervous. Amanda has a little speech written and she’s been practicing it. I have a few ideas about what I want to say, but I haven’t written anything down. I don’t know if I’ll be able to speak when I get up onstage. I have never spoken in public. I feel a little sick with nerves.

John Walsh finally says our names, and we step toward the microphone, with our families right behind us. I feel my heart banging in my chest.

Amanda goes first.

“It is really special to be here with Gina and our families. It means more than you’ll ever know.”

She starts tearing up and stops for a moment, then keeps going:

“I want to thank the center for everything they’ve done and continue to do—not just for us, but for all the missing kids and their families. If I could say only one thing, it would be this: Never give up hope, because miracles do happen!”

Now it’s my turn. I am thinking I probably should just say “thank you,” but at the microphone more words come out:

“Always believe in hope, even though sometimes it is hard to believe in hope. Just pray to God, and God will give you that hope.”

I did it!

Everyone is standing, cheering and applauding for us. It’s amazing. Amanda and I look at each other, and she smiles at me. I feel so alive.

The Cleveland case prompted the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to convene its first-ever summit on long-term missing children.

In April 2014, nearly two hundred investigators, pediatricians, anthropologists, medical examiners, behavioral scientists, and others involved in missing-children cases gathered outside Washington to consider the question: “Are we doing enough?”

The officials noted that an increasing number of long-term missing children were being found alive, including in recent years Jaycee Dugard and Elizabeth Smart. But they also observed that none of those cases had been solved directly because of traditional police investigations into their disappearances. Amanda, Gina, and Michelle escaped on their own. Dugard was found when police became suspicious of her abductor for a completely unrelated matter. Smart was found when a viewer of
America’s Most Wanted
recognized her abductor from a suspect composite made by Smart’s sister.

About four hundred thousand children a year are reported missing in the United States. Most of them turn out to be runaways, and others are taken by family members in custody disputes. Those situations can result in violence to children. A stranger abduction, the stereotypical classical kidnapping, is more rare but there are still about one hundred cases a year. That means that every three or four days a child is kidnapped somewhere in America.

In cases where children have been abducted by strangers, the longer they are missing, the greater the likelihood that they are not alive. However, the center is stressing to law enforcement that, contrary to conventional wisdom, many long-term missing children may still be alive.

One young woman still missing is Ashley Summers, who was fourteen when she disappeared in July 2007, less than a mile from where Amanda and Gina were taken.

For years Amanda’s and Gina’s photos were shown alongside Ashley’s, on “missing” posters, on the big screen at the Cleveland Cavaliers game, and on
The
Oprah Winfrey Show
.

On the day Amanda and Gina escaped, Ashley’s mother, Jennifer, heard that a third woman had escaped with them and she prayed it was her daughter. She frantically called Jen Meyers at the FBI, who broke the bad news.

One morning in September 2014, Amanda walked into the bagel shop where Jennifer Summers works. They didn’t know each other, but Jennifer recognized Amanda immediately from having seen her on TV. She was struck by how Amanda, free after all those years, looked so radiant and happy.

And she wondered:
When will we find Ashley?

2015

Amanda

Jocelyn now attends a regular school and has her own little desk, just like all the other kids. She loves school, and when she comes home she tells me the names of all her new friends and what they did at recess and circle time.

I still worry what others kids will say to her. Before she walked into a big classroom after all those years of being homeschooled, I asked my child psychologist to help me come up with the best way to explain to her more about her father. I didn’t want a stranger to be the first one to tell her things she didn’t know—or worse, to tell her their version of what happened before she could hear it from me.

I did tell Joce that her father had died, but not much else, and she never asked. I think that deep down she knew there were things she didn’t really want to hear. She sees people stop me in the grocery store and ask, “Are you Amanda Berry?” and she saw my picture on the cover of
People
magazine, and all she says is, “Mom, you’re famous!” but never asks why.

Before her first day of the second grade I told her that her daddy had a mental illness that caused him to do bad things. I told her that some people are sick in the stomach, and that Daddy was sick in his mind, and that was why he took me away from my family. For many years nobody knew if I was alive or not, and that is why people are now so happy to see me. And I also told her that he loved her very much. Her response was to hug me and tell me that everything would be okay.

Thanks to Joce, I also have new friends. I love her teacher, and we hang out sometimes. Joce loves her, too, and tells me, “You are my first favorite teacher, and she is my second favorite teacher.” That makes me smile.

Joce has a best friend at school, and her mom and I have also become friends. We all went to a Cavaliers game and saw LeBron James. It’s exciting to see him back in Cleveland. This city has so many great people, and they deserve some good news!

When there is a knock at my door on this quiet street, it’s usually Joe Wooley, the son of my lawyer, Jim Wooley. Joe is a medical student who is about my age, and he gets me. He is funny and makes me laugh. We never talk about the past but about what’s happening today and what we are planning for tomorrow. He’s always fixing something in the house, or putting up the Christmas tree, or assembling a trampoline for Jocelyn. Once he came with his girlfriend, and they played with Jocelyn for hours.

When I see flyers of missing children that come with the ads in the newspaper, I memorize what the boy or girl looks like and focus on some feature that would not change with age. I think we all need to do more for missing children. Many people drive by a billboard with a missing kid’s photo or walk by a flyer on a store door and don’t really even pay attention to them.

When the police first came to my house, my mom was sure I had been kidnapped, but they didn’t take her seriously. That’s just wrong. Even if a lot of teens do run away, when a mother says her kid is in trouble, the police should listen and not tell her they know better. As the years dragged on, most people thought I was dead. So why should there be an ongoing all-out investigation, especially when bank robberies and other crimes occur every day? Why spend the time? I am why. Gina and Michelle are why.

I spend a lot of time being grateful. Especially to all the kind people, many I don’t even know, who have helped me. I am grateful that every day I see Beth, Teddy, and their kids. Beth hasn’t been well, and I am grateful to be able to help take care of her now. The Courage Fund gave me enough money to buy her a new car that is big enough for all seven of us. Her old car broke down all the time, and it’s great to be able to solve that problem for her. I take her to doctors’ appointments and I help out with her kids when she isn’t strong enough. I can never, ever pay her back for all she did while I was gone, but I am going to spend the rest of my life trying.

I think a lot about the rest of my life, and I still don’t know what it’s going to look like. Now that Jocelyn is in school, I need to get working on my high school diploma. I want to get a job, hopefully doing something that will help other people. Maybe I can get some training so that I can become some kind of counselor.

I have noticed something interesting about myself over the past year: I’m becoming less afraid of life. Before I was taken, I didn’t even go to school dances. I stayed in my safe zone and was afraid to try new things. Now I push myself. I was terrified about getting on an airplane, but I did and had a wonderful trip to Washington. I pushed myself to get my driver’s license and now I love the freedom of picking up the car keys and, without telling anybody, walking out the door and driving anywhere I want.

One of these days maybe Joce and I will get in the car and go to New York. I’ve always wanted to see it after all those years watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, first with my mom and then when I was locked inside Seymour Avenue. New York has always been this magical place that just existed on TV. Now it’s not a dream anymore, it’s a destination.

I can get there.

Gina

I recently got my first job and love it. I work in a restaurant. I walked into the place not long after I got out of Seymour Avenue and just got a good feeling there. So months later I went back, filled out an application, and right after my interview they made me a hostess seating people. I answer the phones, too. Every time I walk in the door of the restaurant I’m excited. My boss is great, and it’s nice to meet new people. If any customers have recognized me they haven’t said anything.

I was also able to move out of my old neighborhood and buy a house in the Cleveland suburbs. I’m glad I was able to do that for my family. We have a yard now for Lala and our other dog, Oreo, and my mom has room to plant a garden. She has always wanted to grow her own tomatoes and cucumbers.

The new house has two entrances, and I live on the side that’s like an in-law suite. Everyone else—my parents, my brother, my sister, and her two kids—are on the main side of the house. We eat together, and I hang out over there all the time, but I also can escape when my nieces get too loud and crazy. For the first time in my life, I have my own bedroom and bathroom. In my old house we had one bathroom for seven people, so someone was always yelling at someone else to hurry up. Now we have three and a half bathrooms! I feel lucky.

I’ve reconnected with Chrissy, too. She’s busy with a boyfriend and a job and she lives on the opposite side of Cleveland now, but we send funny texts to each other. People ask me what I think of men, and I say my dad and my brother are great and I would like to meet a wonderful guy someday and have kids. But for now most of my time is spent studying for my high school diploma and working.

Every day I try to keep thinking about now and next, and not about the past. I am trying new things and going new places that make me feel like I have a fresh start on life. Some days it’s easy. Others, not.

I used to blame everybody for what happened to me. I blamed Arlene and Arlene’s mother for not figuring out who kidnapped us. I blamed the people who came into that house and didn’t figure out that we were there. I thought the neighbors on Seymour were so dumb for not realizing what was going on. I was upset that the police and FBI couldn’t find me. It even got to the point where I was mad at my own family, because they were living their lives while I was stuck. But I don’t think like that at all anymore. I know that nobody is to blame for this except Ariel Castro. Not me, not my family, not anybody else. Just one very bad man.

But enough of him. I’m focused on the future. I’m going to travel. I want to see Europe and visit Spain and Italy. I would like to go to Puerto Rico and to the pyramids in Egypt. I want to go skydiving, maybe even bungee jumping. I would never have even thought about doing something like that before I was kidnapped, but now I want to try things that make me feel like I am living every minute to the fullest.

And then I can come back to my cozy new house, where I can find peace and pray to God to watch over my family and keep us all safe.

First and foremost, I want to thank my beautiful mother, Louwana, the strongest person I have ever known. She never gave up hope and fought for me with everything she had. I know she’s watching me now, and she knows I’m safe. I think about her every waking moment and miss her in ways I can’t put into words. It is because of her, and my beautiful sister Beth, that I never gave up hope. I owe them everything.

My mother and my sister were not the only ones who fought for me while I was gone. Our family was at their side, as were countless friends and supporters, including wonderful people like Judy Martin, Art McCoy, the DeJesus family, Pastor Dave Shinault, Bill Safos, Bill Martin, Regina Brett, and many more. People who came to the vigils, who prayed for me, who stayed at my mother’s side. People who never quit on me. I knew you were there. I saw what you were doing for me. You have no idea how important that was. I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

I also want to thank the good people with Black on Black, the Polly Klaas Foundation, the BairFind Foundation, and Project Jason who supported my family so they did not have to fight alone. I would like to thank the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, not just for what they did for me and my family, but also for what they do for families everywhere. Thank you for the Hope Award, and an unforgettable trip to Washington.

I also am grateful to those police officers and investigators who worked to find me, including Detective Laura Parker, Detective Rich Russell, Detective Brian Heffernan, and FBI agents Phil Torsney, Tim Kolonik, and Andrew Burke. They—in particular, my friends Jennifer Meyers and Lisa Hack from the FBI—also helped my family and me after we were free. Thanks to you all.

After we escaped, there was an outpouring of support for me and my family from people I had never met. I was—and still am—completely blown away by the kindness of people who were complete strangers to me. Thank you to the people who created and donated to the Cleveland Courage Fund, and the numerous businesses that held fund-raisers for it. Your generosity has helped put me and my daughter on a path to a wonderful future. I also appreciate the numerous gifts and cards from people who sent messages of support. I have read and saved every single one.

I want to thank Mary and Russ Khouri, whose generosity amazes me. I wouldn’t have my house without them. I’m also grateful to the Milam family for all their support. And a very special thank you to George Sheikh, Paul Irwin, and every volunteer who make a house into our
home
.
I cannot imagine more selfless and generous people.

Thank you to Northern Trust, Westgate Resorts, and to the Cleveland Clinic for all the dental and medical care.

Jim Wooley is one of the greatest friends I’ve ever made. He and his law firm, Jones Day, have given me their time and skills in a way that I can’t fully describe. There is nothing Jim hasn’t done for me and my family. He has helped us rebuild our lives. I’ll be forever grateful. I also want to thank the whole Wooley family, especially Deb and Joe, for their friendship, love, and totally selfless support. They are my family, too.

To our other wonderful lawyers, Heather Kimmel, Henry Hilow, Ben Beckman, and Chris Kelly, I want to tell you how much I appreciate your time, hard work, and pure hearts. You are all amazing.

Thank you to Charles Ramsey for helping me on that crazy day.

Thank you to Bob Barnett, Clare Ferraro, and all the wonderful people at Viking. I am grateful to Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan for helping me tell my story, for all the boxes of tissues, and becoming friends for life.

And finally, thank you to my friend and coauthor, Gina DeJesus. We are now living
our
lives the way we should!

—
Amanda Berry

 • • • 

I want to thank my mother, Nancy Ruiz, and my father, Felix DeJesus, for never, ever giving up the search for me and for keeping hope alive. It is because of your love that I was strong enough and courageous enough to endure my decade away from you.

My parents did not have to wait alone. I’m so grateful for all my friends and family who provided love and support over the years—you are too numerous to name but you know who you are. Thank you especially to Judy Martin, who stood by my parents at every vigil, and to Bill Safos, who became a real friend to my family over the years. For all the prayers, I thank our family pastor and his wife, David and Carol Shinault. And I also appreciate the support of Mary Rose Oakar.

Thank you to those who brought awareness not just to my disappearance, but to missing children all over this country. Dennis Bair, founder of BairFind Foundation, thank you for your BringHome100 campaign and for being a friend to my parents. Tara Pretends Eagle Weber, thank you for helping my parents raise the level of public awareness of my disappearance, and for your efforts to promote the legislation that could become AMINA’s Law. Finally, thank you to the dedicated people at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children—for your work over the years and for giving me the Hope Award. It was a week I will always remember.

Over the years, many police officers and investigators were involved in my case. I appreciate all of your efforts, especially those of Phil Torsney, Tim Kolonick, and Andrew Burke of the FBI. Please don’t give up on all of the other missing children out there.

So many people stepped forward to help me and my family after I escaped. You all have my heartfelt gratitude—especially all of the people who created the Cleveland Courage Fund and donated money to it, and all the businesses that held fund-raisers. Your generosity is amazing and has helped me in ways that you cannot even imagine. I would especially like to thank my cousin Sylvia Colon, who was a calm voice in the midst of the craziness and acted as the spokesperson for my family; Charlene Milam, who taught me to drive, giving me a real sense of freedom; Margo Funk, for helping me to start to heal. Thank you to Betsy Martinez. And to Jennifer Meyers of the FBI, for her support and guidance. Also, thank you to the generous people at Westgate Resorts.

I want to express my gratitude to my lawyers for giving so generously of their time and resources and for never asking for anything in return. From helping me navigate the media storm after my escape to helping me find the right way to tell this story, their guidance has been instrumental. They are: James Wooley of Jones Day; Heather Kimmel of the Office of General Counsel of the United Church of Christ; and Henry Hilow, of McGinty, Hilow, & Spellacy.

I would also like to thank Robert Barnett and the good people at Viking for the chance to bring our story to an audience, and Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan for helping me to tell it with grace. I hope that it will inspire everyone who reads it.

And finally, I would like to thank my coauthor Amanda Berry. I look forward to many good days ahead.

—
Gina DeJesus

 • • • 

Thank you, Amanda and Gina, for being so strong and honest and trusting us to help tell your stories. We are forever changed and better for knowing you, Jocelyn, Beth, Nancy, and Felix.

Jim Wooley’s support of Amanda and Gina has been wise, unfailing, and ferocious, and we are grateful to him for opening the door for us to this project, and for reminding us of the power of optimism, just as Patrick Jordan would. Pat, a champion of the underdog, would have loved Amanda and Gina.

Heather Kimmel and Henry Hilow and the whole Hilow-Ghazoul clan are the finest of people, as are the great Deb and Joe Wooley, and we are grateful for their help and friendship.

Thanks to Maestro Bob Barnett for putting it all together. Clare Ferraro, who brought this book to Viking, is such a pro and unforgettably kindhearted, and Rick Kot is nothing less than a brilliant editor.

At the
Washington Post
, huge thanks to Marty Baron, Cameron Barr, Tracy Grant, and David Griffin. We are extremely grateful to David Finkel for sharing his gift with words and ideas when we most needed it, and to our first readers, including Katharine Weymouth, Laurie Freeman, Mit Spears, Andy Burkhardt, Ray and Jennifer Billings, and Julie Jordan.

Thanks to Patti Davis at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children for her thoughtfulness and deep knowledge of the issues surrounding missing children. Thanks also to Maryanne Warrick for all her great work.

Muchas gracias
to Sockie Colon, a gracious host in Puerto Rico, and to Antonio Rodriguez for leaving his Yauco factory to lead us up into the hills.

In Cleveland, a great American city, there are too many people to thank, including many from St. Joseph Academy; please know how grateful we are for your support. A special shout-out to Tom and Mary Ellen Jordan and Maggie and John Keaney, Sharon Sobol Jordan, and Dave Wallace, and all their fabulous kids. And thanks to Patrick Campbell of P.J. McIntrye’s for his welcoming pub and his intrepid truck.

We’re also grateful to Noreen Jordan and Allen Reiser, Julie Jordan and Jim Cummings, and Kathleen Jordan and Paul Machle for all their support—and Jim’s majestic wine cellar.

Thanks and love to Thomas Sullivan and Patricia Laughlin, and to Ed and Marg Sullivan, the best parents anyone could ask for.

Nora Jordan, who turns eighty-eight on the day this book is published, has always been the most excited about this project, a champion cheerleader. Thanks, Mom!

We dedicate this work to Kate Sullivan and Tom Sullivan, who make it all matter.

—
Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan