Another day with no sign of missing Arizona girl Isabel Celis. Another day with no sign of her parents. Becky and Sergio Celis are still in hiding even though there has been major, major movement on the case!
Police think she could be on a store surveillance camera! But even that has yet to draw a public reaction from her parents. OK, yeah, the mom and dad of the missing 6-year-old released a statement to the media yesterday, saying they'll never give up hope that they'll find their daughter. And police have made it clear that they're cooperating with the investigation. But there's just something odd about the fact that no one has gotten either of these folks out in front of the TV cameras yet.
Tucson police have announced they're giving up their search, and the FBI is resorting to hitting up local store cameras to try to find a shot of little Isa sometime between the time her parents went to bed Friday night and Saturday morning when Sergio found her bed empty. Turns out there was even a camera pointed straight at the Celis house! Somebody out there might be able to shed light on what happened to this little girl; whether she was walking alone, whether she was with an abductor. Pretty big changes.
But if police were saying they were "winding" down a search for my missing kid, and she hadn't been found, I would be spitting nails. I would be all over the place trying to keep them on the hunt. I'd be begging storeowners to turn over those cameras. I would be demanding neighbors come out and tell every detail of what they did Friday night or Saturday morning.
I would fight for my daughter until there was no fight left in me.
But that's me. I'm not the Celis family. I don't know how they operate. We don't know MUCH about them period.
Maybe it's the way missing child cases go down these days that I keep coming back to the Celis parents. We always see the parents -- whether they're fighting with one another or standing beside one another. Either way, they're always there, having their side of the story ripped apart by the media, trying to plead for the return of their child. And that's not even a "new" phenomena. Remember John and Patty Ramsey? They were everywhere! And it was 16 years ago that little JonBenet was discovered in their Colorado basement.
I can understand why the Celises wouldn't want to come out. The media loves to rip these people apart, and they're likely fragile right now. I know I'd be a wreck if that was my 6-year-old daughter who had up and disappeared. They also have Isabel's brothers to think about.
But it makes me wonder if their silence doesn't speak to what may have happened to little Isabel. If they're not making a plea to an abductor, is it possible they don't think she was abducted at all? Here's hoping the answers to all the questions lie on those surveillance tapes ... and this nightmare ends soon!
What would you be doing if you were in Sergio and Becky Celis' position?