Megan Waterman’s family distributes flyers in New York

SCARBOROUGH – The family and friends of Megan Waterman have not lost hope that the young Scarborough woman who has been missing since June 6 will return home safely.

More than a month after 22-year-old Waterman was reported missing during a trip to New York City, Waterman’s mother, Lorraine Ela, aunt Elizabeth Meserve and cousin Aaron Jacques spent last weekend distributing missing-person posters and balloons with posters throughout shopping complexes in Hauppauge, N.Y., on Long Island, just east of the city, where Waterman was last seen.

“We did a balloon launch,” Ela said. “We went to all the little plazas around the hotel and handed out balloons. We asked people to take a balloon and when they got to their final destination to let the balloon go. All of the balloons had little missing person tags attached to them.”

The group also placed missing person fliers in the windows of many of the stores in and around the plaza. In total, she said, more than 350 missing person fliers were distributed.

Ela said most of the passersby were unfamiliar with the case, but were concerned and sympathetic.

Waterman, mother of a 3-year-old daughter, was last seen at a Holiday Inn in Hauppauge during a trip to New York City with her boyfriend, Akeem Cruz, 20, of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Both the Suffolk County, N.Y., and Scarborough police departments continue to investigate the disappearance.

“Our detectives working on the case continue to be in constant contact with the police over in New York,” said Scarborough police Chief Robert Moulton. “They have been chasing down some leads, but certainly she has not been found yet.”

“We are confident they are making progress and are working on it,” said Meserve.

The balloon launch was organized by LostNMissing, a nonprofit group in New Hampshire that helps families find their lost loved ones. Ela said it was the largest launch the group has ever done.

“LostNMissing has been wonderful to my family. When I first contacted them I thought that they would just put the missing person notice on the website, but I was shocked with all the different things that they have done to help,” Ela said.

Meserve also praised the organization and its founder, Cynthia Caron.

“We don’t know what we would have done without Cynthia,” Meserve said. “It was chaos for us after she disappeared. We didn’t know what to do. You never think something like this could happen to your family.”

Aside from the balloon launch in Long Island, LostNMissing organized a similar event in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Scarborough on June 26. The previous night they had organized a candlelight vigil at Congress Square, where more than 125 people showed up to honor Waterman.

Ela said additional events are planned for this fall.

“If she is not found by the end of September, the beginning of October we are planning another balloon launch in New York City,” Ela said. “We are planning a spaghetti supper and silent auction for September.”

Meserve said the spaghetti supper and silent auction will raise money to offer a reward for Waterman’s safe return.

Not in character

In the nighttime hours on June 5, Waterman reportedly told Cruz, her boyfriend of 11 months, that she was going out for a little while and would call him later.

According to Meserve, Waterman did call her grandmother -Meserve’s mother – at 12 a.m. that night. Waterman and her daughter lived in Scarborough with her grandmother, Muriel Benner. A final call was made on her cell phone at 1:30 a.m., right around the time Waterman was seen on security cameras leaving the hotel.

“Since then there has been no activity on her phone,” said Meserve.

Ela said she hasn’t spoken with her daughter since June 5, and when she last spoke to her, she did not detect anything suspicious in either Waterman’s voice or the nature of the phone call.

“She sounded like normal Megan,” Ela said.

This lack of communication, her family has said, is unlike Waterman, who would remain in close contact with her family, especially her daughter, during her trips to New York City.

“We definitely know that if she is still alive she is not willingly not communicating,” Meserve said. “It is not in her character.”

Her daughter’s disappearance, Ela said, has taken its toll on her not only emotionally, but academically, as well, as she pursues a college degree.

“My GPA before she was missing was 3.67,” she noted. “Since then it has dropped to 2.3 because I cannot concentrate until we know something and she is found.”

Meserve said the disappearance has also been hard on Waterman’s daughter, who has had trouble sleeping at night. Meserve said the child knows her mother is missing and she is being looked for, but is too young to totally understand the situation.

Poor decision

While the cause of Waterman’s disappearance has not been made public, there is speculation by investigators that it could be tied to the fact that Waterman had been known to advertise on the adult listings on Craigslist and that she may have gone to New York in response to one of her ads.

Her friends and family do not deny she was involved in such a practice, but maintain Waterman is a devoted and loving daughter, sister, aunt, friend and mother who had made a poor decision.

An item posted on meganwaterman.com, a site set up to aid in gathering information about her disappearance, suggests the online escort ads were not her idea, but rather the idea of Cruz.

“Sometimes young women who are vulnerable are singled out and those in the trafficking industry step in. These young men portray themselves as charming and convince vulnerable women that escorting is an ‘easy way out’ and unfortunately, may end up missing or foul play may occur especially if the woman wishes to no longer participate,” Caron wrote in a press release. “Women can be moved around to other locations, or sold, and kept drugged so as not to escape. I don’t believe the general public is truly aware of how large the trafficking industry is.”

Prior to her involvement with Cruz, Waterman worked two jobs in Scarborough to make ends meet for her and her daughter.

Meserve said Sonia Ossorio, the executive director of the Brooklyn chapter of the National Organization for Women, has taken an interest in Waterman’s disappearance and has sent a letter to Craigslist to urge it to put a “good faith effort” forward to show the company, which Ossorio indicates made $22 million on the escort portion of the site, is doing something to help prevent crimes against women.

Cruz has had a history of run-ins with the law, including an aggravated drug trafficking arrest in South Portland on May 20, a criminal threatening with a dangerous weapon charge after threatening a women with a knife last month and a July arrest warrant request after he failed to appear in court in Portland for driving without a license. He has been questioned by police, but only as a witness, not as a suspect in the disappearance.

Lorraine Ela made a trip to Long Island wtih relatives over the weekend to distribute posters and seek clues to the disappearance of Ela’s daughter, 22-year-old Meg Waterman. The young Scarborough mother disappeared last month on a trip with her boyfriend. (Photo by Rich Obrey)Elizabeth Meserve, Megan Waterman’s aunt, hands out a balloon with a missing person tag to a shopper outside a storefront in Long Island, N.Y., near where Waterman, a Scarborough resident, was last seen. (Courtesy photo)