An 18-year-old Ridgefield woman’s parents are increasingly worried because she left home more than two weeks ago and hasn’t tried to contact them.
“We’re absolutely frantic about it,” Rachael Blakely’s father, Dave Blakely, said Thursday afternoon. “We just want to know that our child’s safe.”
Rachael, the father said, has been missing since Aug. 4, when she left saying she was going for a walk.
Ridgefield police have investigated, and have seen Rachael in a security video made a couple days after she disappeared, at the WalMart in Hazel Dell. But there’s been no indication of any foul play and, because Rachael is an adult, police have no authority to make her return home, a police employee said.
Dave Blakely said it’s unlike Rachael to not call home, and said she had no friends that he’s aware of. He said the family moved to Ridgefield only recently, and Rachael was being home-schooled, soon to finish her last year.
“We’ve put out fliers by the hundreds” all over the Vancouver area, including at convenience stores and bus stops, he said.
Asked where he figures Rachael might be, he said: “I haven’t got a clue, unless she knows someone we’re not aware of.”
Rachel is 5 feet 1 inch tall and 110 pounds, with waist-length sandy-brown hair that she likes to wear in braids. She has brown eyes and wears prescription eyeglasses with pink frames, her father said.
The family is asking anyone with information about Rachael’s whereabouts to call 360-931-5571.
