THANK
YOU THOMAS LAUTH
To whom it may concern,
Our daughter started slipping in her senior year of
high-school. She became very secretive about her life, she
was missing school, and seemed to be on drugs. It was
impossible to have any kind of conversation with her, she
was so much on the defensive.
We tried 2 different therapists and an outpatient drug
program. Nothing worked. She somehow graduated and we were
trying to talk about the future with her, but she was always
very evasive. At the beginning of the summer, she chose to
go back to a camp where she had been for the last three
years, the last year, as a counselor in training. Since she
made up her mind at the last minute, there was only space
for a kitchen helper. She went. She lasted 4 weeks again and
then got a friend to pick her up and bring her home.
Things were the same, her staying out and not coming back
for a few days. Then she would come back, sleep a lot and be
very disheveled and unapproachable. We had a trip going back
to see family and friends coming up and 2 days before
leaving she declared that she could not come with us, this
was no longer her life. We tried everything for her to come
along but she was so stubborn. We were losing our patience.
It had been a year of constant tension and confrontations.
We could not tie her up and force her on the airplane…
On her 18th birthday, she left. After awhile, letters from
attorneys in L.A. came to our house, offering their
services. I started talking to a pi and he said for me to
think of what she could have done in the past that would
trigger this. Then, we got more letters. I called again and
that’s when we found out that she had been arrested a few
times for prostitution and had been released from a jail
that afternoon.
We tried many times to find her and to think of ways to get
her out of there. She finally called right around
Thanksgiving. She stayed with us until January 3rd and then
took off again. This time we called Thomas Lauth and started
working with him. He was very thorough trying to understand
the history of our situation and acted very quickly. After a
few telephone calls and e-mail exchanges, he came to see us
and got a lead. He had asked us to prepare letters and
pictures to give to our daughter. That turned out to be a
brilliant idea. All three of us flew to Phoenix and on our
first night there he found our daughter and the only thing
that we were able to do was to give her that folder with the
letters and the pictures.
On two other occasions, Tom traced our daughter’s
whereabouts, and every time we managed to have contact with
her which, I think, was the reason why she eventually came
back. Knowing that we were not giving up.
When we felt hopeless, Tom would encourage us not to give
up. His amazing perseverance and promptness to act is what
saved us.
Brigitte |
