Castro Ariel - Finding Me: a Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed: A Memoir of the Cleveland Kidnappings

Note to Readers:

In recounting the events in this memoir, chronologies have been
compressed or altered and details have been changed to assist the narrative. Where dialogue appears, the intention was to re-create the essence of conversations rather than verbatim quotes. Names and identifying characteristics of some individuals have been changed.

Copyright 2014 by Lillian Rose Lee

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first edition

For Joey

T HE DAY I DISAPPEARED in 2002, not many people even seemed to notice. I was twenty-onea young mom who stopped at a Family Dollar store one afternoon to ask for directions. For the next eleven years I was locked away in hell. Thats the part of my story you may already know. Theres a whole lot more that you dont.

Ive never talked about the painful life I had even before I was kidnapped. Ive never revealed why I spoke to the man who came up to me in the store or the creepy feeling I had when we left. Ive never discussed what really happened between me, Gina, and Amanda inside those walls. Matter of fact, Ive never told my whole story. Until now.

Im not the first person to go through an ordeal like this. And every time a big kidnapping case comes up everyone is shocked: Jaycee Dugard, who spent eighteen years chained up in a backyard shack in California; Elizabeth Smart, who was taken from her bedroom in Salt Lake City the same summer I was abducted; Shawn Hornbeck, the Missouri boy who was snatched while riding his bike to his friends home; and in November 2013 the three London women who were found after spending thirty years in slavery. These kinds of stories are big news, but when they fade away, its easy to forget all the people who are still missing. Thats one reason Im opening up my life in this book: I want everyone to remember those who are lost.

And I want to urge you that if you ever notice anything that seems off about a situationa child who keeps missing school, a woman who doesnt seem able to leave a houseplease do call the police and ask them to check it out. Dont worry about seeming foolish if it turns out to be fine. At least youll have the peace of mind that comes from knowing that you could have helped someone who was in trouble. Please, always take the two minutes to make that call.

I NVISIBLETHAT S HOW I felt for the nearly four thousand days I survived in Ariel Castros hellhole. Every single day all I could think about was getting back to my son, Joey. I wouldnt have believed this before it happened to me, but I now know that anyone can be kidnapped. Anywhere. Anytime. And on the summer day when it happened to me, not too many people seemed to care. Nobody had a vigil. It wasnt all over the news. Neither my relatives nor the neighbors got together and put up flyers. The whole world moved on as if I was never even alive. I felt like I was screaming at the top of my lungs, but no one could hear me.

Every person who is lost is somebodys child. We will never know all their names, but we can still keep them in our thoughts. As I mentioned, we can also speak up when something seems fishy. My eleven years would have been a lot shorter if more people had paid attention and then actually taken a moment to call the cops.

As hard as it has been to look back on what happened to me, it was even harder to live through it. Some of my memories are all over the place. I dont even know if its possible to make sense out of chaos, but thats what Ive tried to do. I have probably left out some things, but this is what I recall after being held captive for eleven years. The man who took away a huge part of my life would have wanted me to stay quiet. But thats exactly why I shouldnt. Even before I found myself in the wrong place at the wrong time, I felt like I didnt have a voice. So now I want to speak up for all those missing women and children who still arent being heard. I hope there will never be another person who feels like I did for so many years: Thrown away. Ignored. Forgotten.

Yes, I made it through one of the most terrible experiences that can happen to a human being, but most of all, my story is about hope. I might have been chained, starved, and beaten, yet that monster couldnt totally crush my spirit. Over and over I chose to get back up and keep going. Now Im going to tell you how I did it.

I WOKE UP EARLY that morning in September 2013 around 5 a.m. The night before, I could barely even sleep. A whirlwind of thoughts went through my head. What has Joeys life been like since I last saw him? What does he look like, now that hes fourteen? Is he happy in his new home? Is he doing well in school? What does he want to be when he grows up? Does he even know that Im his mom?

There were so many questions I wanted to ask, so many years I had missed. I really wanted to see my son in person, but I couldntat least not yet. The family who adopted him when he was four was concerned about interrupting his life. I completely understood that, but it still broke my heart.

For now, my lawyer Peggy had told me, they are willing to send some photos of him. But you have to keep them private to protect his identity. On the morning of our meeting we were getting together so she could show them to me.

Peggy handed me the pages, and I spread them out on the table. There were eight photocopied pictures, four on each page. As soon as I saw the first one, hot tears ran down my face.

Oh my God, he looks just like me! I said. Joey had on a blue baseball jersey and wore a cap down over his dark, curly hair. He stood with his bat over his arm. The photo seemed current. He still had that cute button nose, and he looked tall for his agehe mustve gotten his height from his father, who was six foot. But that big smile, those small ears, and those big, juicy lips? Those things came straight from me. I moved the pictures to the side so the water dripping from my cheeks wouldnt ruin them. Peggy handed me a tissue.

Look, I said through my tears, he loves baseball the same way I do!

One at a time, I stared at every picture. In the second photo he looked about seven and was kneeling and wearing a suit. In the next he was mixing some cookie dough in a bowl. He likes to cook, like me! I exclaimed. Besides the baseball picture, there was one where he was holding a hockey stick, another where he was wearing a scuba outfit in a pool, and one where he was rollerblading.