Local opinion: America’s unequal response to the missing

As a former resident of Tucson’s saguaro-studded Catalina Foothills, I recall with a chill the pitch-black darkness and eerie silence after midnight. But this affluent community’s silence and sense of safety was shattered on February 1, when 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie was abducted from her home.

The forensic details of her case quickly captivated the nation: a disconnected door cam at 1:47 a.m.; lost pacemaker connection at 2:28 a.m.; blood-stained porch; missed church service. These details, together with Guthrie’s status, connections and a $50K reward , flipped a missing person report into a full-scale federal investigation within hours.

When a loved one goes missing, every family deserves this "all-hands-on-deck" response. But seeing the dizzying FBI command posts, 24-hour national search swarms, and digital billboards spanning a ribbon of highway from Texas to California, I feel sadness and empathy for the thousands of other families whose "hour of desperation" is met with institutional silence.

In this case, Nancy Guthrie’s daughter is one of the most visible media figures in the country. Savannah Guthrie is a prominent, award-winning broadcast journalist and attorney best known as co-anchor of NBC News' TODAY show; a former broadcast journalist for NBC Tucson affiliate KVOA-TV; and a University of Arizona graduate. She’s also a former White House correspondent with connections to — well, you get it.

This social capital is a massive force multiplier. While federal agencies and U.S. Customs and Border Protection mobilize for this elderly white female, the quantitative reality for most missing persons is a quiet record in a database. In 2023 alone, more than 563,000 missing person records were entered into the FBI’s national system. That averages 1,500 souls every day.

Yet, as a society, we triage our empathy based on what sociologists call the "Ideal Victim" — someone perceived as vulnerable, blameless, and respectable. Typically, it’s a pretty, young female with long blonde hair. Still, at 84, with limited mobility, deep ties to her church, and a famous last name, Nancy Guthrie fits the archetype with clinical precision.

The disparity is distressingly systemic. Black Americans account for 38% of all missing persons despite making up only 14% of the U.S. population. Indigenous women are 400% more likely to go missing than other groups. Yet these disappearances are frequently written off as "runaways" or "voluntary," effectively scrubbing them from the detectives' workloads and the headlines before the first 48 hours have even passed.

This classification is a secondary form of disappearance. When we label a missing child a "runaway," we often ground the search before it even starts, as many states exclude runaways from the AMBER Alert system. This creates a hierarchy of worthiness that leaves marginalized families to navigate "ambiguous grief"— an agonizing limbo where the pain of the unknown is compounded by the lack of public concern.

We are seeing glimpses of progress, such as California’s "Ebony Alert" for missing Black youth, and the FCC’s new nationwide code for endangered Indigenous people. But these shouldn't be niche tools; they should be the standard.

On a social media scale, a study of online news reveals that while a missing young white woman can generate over 120 stories, a woman of color in similar circumstances might only see eight. On platforms like TikTok, the gap is a chasm: the hashtag for one white victim reached 794 million views, while an Indigenous woman missing for years sat at just 16,400.

News media stories about missing persons should not be generated because of how someone looks or who they know. Mainstream media — and we as residents of this planet — should make as much noise for every missing person as we’re hearing about Nancy Gunthrie. If reporters and social media influencers mobilize only when a victim has a pretty face or a famous last name, that’s not “justice for all” — that’s prejudice and professional courtesy.

The search for missing people should not be based on what they look like or who they know. Every family — and every person — deserves the same resources and the same dignity.