The officers found him asleep under a blanket on the 16th Street Mall.
The school uniform he had been wearing two weeks earlier when he disappeared was replaced somehow by shorts and a T-shirt.
Todd Johnson, the boy’s father, hugged him tightly.
“He is a good, kind-hearted and loving child,” said his stepmother, Lyresa. “But when he does bad things, they are really bad.”
His name is Masir. He is 14 years old and a freshman at Montbello High School, where he attends special-education classes, his stepmother said.
I first heard from her Aug. 25. Masir had been missing for days, she said.
She had driven Masir to the first day of school Aug. 19 and told him she would be back at 2:45 p.m. And she was. But where was Masir?
“He had packed his supplies in his new backpack that day and was genuinely excited to be going to school,” she said.
Maybe he had forgotten and walked home. Lyresa, 36, drove the way he probably did it. When she didn’t see him, she drove the neighborhood for hours. When nightfall came, she knew something was wrong.
The Johnsons drove all night looking for their son.
The next morning, they called the police.
He is probably just with friends, police said. It wasn’t until the next week, after his folks begged the officer at the school to file a report, that he was classified as a runaway and his name and picture put into the system.
As the days ticked by, the Johnsons were beside themselves. They posted fliers all over town.
Why weren’t the police helping more?
“We take every report of a missing child seriously,” said Detective John White, a Denver police spokesman.
The question White would not answer is what, exactly, the police do regarding reports of a runaway.
The Johnsons want the answer to that question, and to know how their son survived.
Finally, at midnight Sept. 2, the telephone rang. It was the Denver police. They found Masir on the 16th Street Mall.
He went to bed and slept on and off for three days. When he finally sat down with his parents, the boy said he’d had “a wonderful time.” Beyond that, answers were hard to come by.
He left school that day, got a map of the city and decided to see the 16th Street Mall.
He traded his uniform for the shorts and T-shirt. At night, he ate at homeless shelters or churches that offered food.
Why didn’t he call? Why didn’t he come home?
“He told me he didn’t know how. To both questions,” Lyresa said.
He has been sick all week. The doctor told her to keep him home from school until Monday. It is a day she dreads.
“I made him promise never to do this again,” she said. “With Masir, you never know if his promises mean anything.”
She and Todd will accompany him to school next week. They will beg his special-ed teachers to keep an eye on him. And then, she said, they will pray.
“He is alive and not hurt, and I am so grateful,” Lyresa said. “I cannot go through this again. I am so scared.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
