The Grandview Rescue: Finding Doe, The Reunion That Became a Rescue

In December 2015, Victoria Cameron traveled to Kansas City, Missouri, to attend The International House of Prayer’s annual One Thing conference and spend time at the ministry’s 24/7 prayer room. She arrived a couple weeks before the conference began so she could frequent the prayer room and reconnect with someone she had wondered about for years.

That person was Doe.

Years earlier, Doe had played a role in Victoria’s return home after she had been trafficked in 1996. After their lives went separate directions, Victoria occasionally heard fragments of information about her, but never enough to know what had become of her. The uncertainty stayed with her. Every so often she found herself wondering the same question:

What happened to Doe?

While visiting Kansas City, Victoria found her through social media. To her surprise, Doe responded.

Victoria thought it would be a simple reunion. She imagined the two of them meeting for coffee, catching up on their lives, and talking about the years that had passed since they last saw each other.

Instead, the reunion turned into a rescue.

Doe told Victoria she was staying in a house in Grandview, Missouri, and asked if she could pick her up because she did not have a car. Victoria agreed.

When she arrived at the house, nothing initially seemed unusual. The two women talked briefly sitting in a living room in front of a Christmas tree, then prepared to leave. Then a man named Alfredo suddenly ran towards the front door.

He slammed the door shut and blocked their exit.

Victoria remembers he shouted:

“Dogs don’t leave!”

Victoria did not understand what was happening.

Then Doe did something unexpected.

She lied.

Drawing a comparison to Rahab protecting the spies in the Bible, Victoria believes Doe intentionally misrepresented who Victoria was to Alfredo in order to get him to let them leave. The explanation Doe gave him worked. Alfredo stepped aside, and the two women hurried out of the house, and ran across the snow covered front yard to where Victoria’s car was parked on the street.

At the time, Victoria did not fully understand the danger she had just escaped.

Only later did she realize how close she may have come to becoming trapped herself.

The two women drove to a coffee shop in Grandview to reconnect.

What began as a reunion quickly became something else.

As they talked, Victoria realized Doe was living in circumstances far different from what she had imagined. The more Doe shared, the more apparent it became that she was involved in an environment that appeared dangerous, exploitative, was difficult to escape, and sounded like a version of forced prostitution.

Victoria had spent years wondering what had happened to her friend.

Now she was finally getting an answer.

It was not the answer she expected.

The situation became even more alarming when young men connected to Doe’s situation appeared at the coffee shop.

They appeared to be monitoring her.

They walked over to the table and spoke to Doe in a menacing, threatening manner and stated,

“Dogs don’t leave!”

The phrase that had been spoken at the house followed them to the coffee shop.

To Victoria, it became clear that Doe was being watched.

The reunion no longer felt safe.

Victoria found herself caught between two conflicting impressions.

At times, Doe seemed like the same person she remembered from years earlier. She saw flashes of the young woman who cared deeply about her faith. She was someone who loved singing and being a worship leader and writing poetry and songs and wanted her life to have purpose.

Yet at other moments, Doe seemed completely different —a hollow shell of the person she used to be.

The contrast was confusing.

Victoria could not always tell whether Doe was reaching for help, protecting herself, protecting Victoria, or simply trying to survive the circumstances she was living in.

Looking back, Victoria believes much of what she witnessed was survival behavior.

At the time, however, she struggled to understand what she was seeing.

As the evening progressed, Victoria became increasingly concerned for Doe’s safety.

The situation eventually led them to Liberty Hospital, after Doe had a panic attack.

There, sitting in Doe’s hospital room during the week of Hanukkah, Victoria sat with Doe and prayed for her.

A television channel in the hospital room was playing Hanukkah worship music.

For Victoria, the timing stood out.

She reflected on the many moments in Jewish history when God intervened during appointed times and holidays, and she wondered if this night would become one of those moments in her own story.

While at the hospital, Victoria contacted the FBI and reported her concerns.

An officer arrived to speak with Doe.

What happened next became one of the most memorable moments of the entire experience.

The officer confronted Doe about her circumstances and offered her a path out.

Then he issued a warning Victoria never forgot.

“If you go back to that lifestyle once, I’m not coming back for you.”

The statement struck both women with unusual force.

For Victoria, it felt like a line drawn in the sand.

A decision point.

A moment where rescue was being offered, but where the future would depend upon what Doe chose to do next.

The experience left Victoria with mixed emotions.

For years she had wondered what became of her friend.

She finally found her.

She found someone who appeared trapped in circumstances she did not know how to escape.

She found someone who seemed to move back and forth between hope and despair, vulnerability and self-protection, honesty and concealment.

Most of all, she found someone that needed to be rescued.

Victoria has often reflected on the fact that Doe once spoke about wanting her life to be a testimony for Jesus.

As a teenager, Doe talked about wanting to help people and make a difference in the world. She often described herself as the black sheep, the lost sheep, the one who never quite fit in.

Years later, when Victoria finally found her again, she understood those words differently.

“Doe always said that she was a lost sheep, and that she was the black sheep,” Victoria said. “I didn’t know how lost she really was.”

The reunion Victoria expected never happened.

Instead, she found herself in the middle of a rescue effort.

What began as an attempt to reconnect with someone she had not seen in years became an answer to a question she had carried for a lifetime.

She finally learned what happened to Doe.

And that answer stayed with her long after she left Kansas City.