Who's Looking for Arizona's Missing Girls?
TIFFANY PHARES
UPDATE [8/9/20]: After compiling this blog post, I found the following information about Tiffany’s disappearance:
On July 11, 2017, Tiffany Phares turned 14. It was the summer before her freshman year of high school. On a Saturday, eleven days later, she vanished from Glendale, Arizona, and hasn’t been seen since.
Even though Tiffany was reported missing more than three years ago, her disappearance has never been covered in the media beyond what fits on a missing persons poster. There’s no information publicly available on the circumstances surrounding Tiffany’s disappearance, and there’s little information available on what her life was like around the time she went missing.
But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to work with. Like most girls her age, Tiffany left behind a digital footprint, a meandering trail of insights into her young life. Tiffany’s social media and gaming accounts give her the opportunity to tell us about herself, in her words.
In 2014, Tiffany wrote on Twitter: “Hey what up im 10 years old i love minecraft im fun outgoing and always online! I love annimals i have a dog named scrappy! I love skydoesminecraft aka adam!”
As Tiffany got older and outgrew one social media page, she’d just replace it with another. She posted on one of her Twitter pages about her parents’ ongoing divorce, and about fighting with her brothers on another. Her Instagram account documents a deep passion for online gaming, especially Minecraft. It also depicts Tiffany’s adventures with a little white dog, named Scrappy, and innocent flirtations with a boy named Connor Faulkner. Tiffany also has a YouTube channel where she’d post videos of herself playing with friends.
Prior to her disappearance, Tiffany dyed her blonde hair red.
Before she went missing, Tiffany Phares dyed her blonde hair red.
Alicia Navarro went missing from Glendale, Arizona, on September 15, 2019.
ALICIA NAVARRO
Listen to Gone From Glendale, our investigative podcast covering Alicia Navarro’s disappearance. Just over two years after Tiffany went missing, 14-year-old Alicia Navarro also disappeared from Glendale in the early morning hours of Sunday, September 15, just five days before her 15th birthday. She disappeared from her own house in the middle of the night, near the intersection of N 45th Ave and W Rose Lane.
Alicia’s disappearance has gotten a little more attention from the media, including a deep dive into her life featured on this blog, in large part due to her mother’s tireless crusade for answers. But after almost a year, there are still no new leads on where Alicia might be, and the Glendale Police Department has declared her case “de-prioritized.”
As of this writing, at least 55 girls have gone missing in Arizona this year who have not yet been found. There are still at least 30 missing girls who disappeared in 2019. I’d like to think the media is getting better at shining a light on these stories, but the vast majority of Arizona’s missing girls get even less media coverage than Tiffany Phares did, if their disappearances are even reported in the first place.
It’s not just the media that evades the issue though — the state of Arizona has no active, comprehensive database of missing persons. As far as I’m aware, no state does. The National Institute of Justice established the NamUs database of missing and unidentified persons, but even that database excludes Tiffany. (It does have an entry for Alicia Navarro, though.)
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) likewise has an incomplete database. After a missing juvenile is found, it can still take months for there to be a public announcement, if there is one at all.
From what is known about the lives of Alicia and Tiffany, there are striking similarities between the two. Both teens were gamers who had complicated home lives and spent significant amounts of time online. Both played Minecraft, which has servers for meeting local strangers. Both girls altered their appearances slightly before they went missing, and both disappeared from Glendale right around their birthdays and a brand-new school year (and school).
Anaiah Walker went missing from Laveen, Arizona, on April 19, 2019. She was later found deceased on Interstate-10 in Buckeye.
ANAIAH WALKER
Fourteen-year-old Anaiah Walker went missing from Laveen, AZ, on April 19, 2019, just two days before her 15th birthday. Anaiah was reported. missing after she failed to return home from school.
On May 22, 2019, Anaiah was found deceased on a median along Interstate I-10, in Buckeye. While her manner of death has not yet been officially ruled on, it’s known that Anaiah had been a victim of sex trafficking and most likely died in a hit-and-run.
Anaiah first got trapped in the sex-trafficking trade in 2018, according to her father, Adrian Walker, but had managed to escape and was living in a group home when she went missing again in April. Anaiah’s family is trying to raise awareness about the sex trafficking industry, including how traffickers groom, lure and ensnare their victims, leaving them unable to return to their families. They’re also determined to find whoever is responsible for the girl’s death.
Some missing girls make it back home, some girls’ lives end in tragedy, and for some girls, there are no answers.
Arizona’s Missing Girls
Girls and women going missing, whether through trafficking or other means, is a serious crisis in America and throughout the world, and, like most crises, it’s one that disproportionately affects BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) communities.
It’s a particularly unique problem in Arizona, where the approximately 32 teenage girls, ages 13-18, who were reported missing throughout 2019, have not yet been found. Though it’s not the most convenient route, Arizona does share its southern border with Mexico, which is the ultimate destination for some traffickers.
Further, Arizona has one of the largest populations of Indigenous people of any state, and it’s well-documented that the deaths and disappearances of Indigenous women go unreported and un-investigated at staggering rates.
Out of the 30+ missing girls from 2019, at least 10 went missing in the one-month stretch leading up to their birthdays, and five went missing in the just ten-day period leading up to their birthdays. Some went missing right after a birthday. Eight went missing in the month of May. Eleven of the girls disappeared from Tucson. Fifteen of the girls — about half — were 16-years-old when they disappeared. (These figures are inexact because there is no single, accurate database of missing kids).
Of the approximately 55 newly missing teenage girls of 2020, twelve girls were reported missing in the month of May alone. Three girls even went missing on the same day — Wednesday, May 20 — from the towns of Tucson, Phoenix and Glendale, respectively.
The fact that a disproportionate number of girls seem to disappear right before or after a birthday, or other major holiday, could point to predatory grooming. Predators will say anything they can to convince already vulnerable teens to meet up with them in person. Traffickers prey on the vulnerability of youth and the fact that teenagers are socialized to put a high premium on appearances by showering young girls with compliments, like: “You’re so beautiful,” “I wish I had a girlfriend like you,” or “You could be a model.” Predators often target kids from broken homes and shy kids with low self-esteem who may not have many friends to confide in.
If the grooming process is about making the target feel as special as possible, birthdays and other holidays are a boon for bad actors because they provide the perfect opportunity to lavish gifts and attention on a susceptible target.
Predators also rely on the fact that there are other explanations for why kids might go missing around important events, especially if they leave of their own volition, and law enforcement does not prioritize finding “runaways” unless they’re proven to be in imminent danger.
When Alicia disappeared, she left a note saying she’d run away, and brought items suggesting she only intended to go on a brief adventure, according to her mother. It’s now believed she was groomed and lured from her home by someone she met online. That person may have coached her for months on how to act to avoid suspicion, and he, or she, has probably done it before.
Finding Arizona’s missing girls is too big a task for law enforcement to tackle alone, and the community must avoid seeing these disappearances as either existing in a vacuum, or — on the other side of the spectrum — as being part and parcel of some larger, inevitable catastrophe. There’s nothing inevitable about these girls’ disappearances. The upshot here is that by understanding the circumstances in which teenage girls disappear, and in particular by sharing their stories, we may be able to draw the sorts of connections that could help save the next girl, or find some of the ones we’ve lost.
If you have any information about the disappearances of Alicia Navarro or Tiffany Phares, you are urged to immediately call the Glendale Police Department at 623-930-3000. You may also contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at 1-800-THE-LOST. If you have any information about the death of Anaiah Walker, you are urged to call the Phoenix Police Department at (602) 262-6151.