Pembroke Pines ministry combs waterways for kidsFiled Under: Press

Relying on faith, and little else, a ministry searches South Florida waterways for missing children.

BY JACK DOLAN
jdolan@MiamiHerald.com

(Miami Herald) - Some church groups devote their weekends to bake sales. Some play bingo. Others dive into gloomy canals in the pouring rain, searching for human remains.

Saturday, volunteer divers for Missing Children Ministries International came up empty-handed after hours of searching through the murky water and deep silt at the bottom of a nondescript canal just west of Hiatus Road near Oakland Park Boulevard in Sunrise.

Most people would drive by the canal without noticing it. But Dinorah Perry, founder of Missing Children Ministries, based in Pembroke Pines, said she spotted a gap in the guard rail that stirred her darkest fears.

Among the dozen people watching the search from the canal’s bank was Ethel Mitchell, 76, of Fort Lauderdale. Her grandson disappeared in 1983, when he was 16. There was no real reason to think he — or anyone else — would be down there, she conceded. But she was grateful to the ministry for making the effort.

”It would bring closure, regardless of how they might find him,” Mitchell said.

Perry said she was inspired to search for missing children in 1995, when she watched Jimmy Ryce’s father break down and beg for help during a television interview as police hunted for his kidnapped son.

The infamous case ended when they found the boy’s dismembered body buried in a series of garden planters.

”In order to do this, I have to think like the crazy people,” Perry said. “I’m scared of people. You don’t know what they can do.”

And yet, people seem drawn to Perry. Volunteers delivered pizza. Police corralled traffic. An ambulance sat nearby, just in case.

Derek Borrero, from Homestead, is a Scuba instructor with an interest in underwater crime-scene investigation who volunteered to help Perry.

TAKING THE PLUNGE

On Saturday, he stood in the driving rain on the canal’s east bank holding one end of a guide rope. A partner held the other end on the west bank. Clinging to the rope, beneath the surface, were three divers, including Borrero’s son Jonathan.

Not long into the search, Jonathan lost his mask. It vanished into the silt. It didn’t matter, he said. The water was so cloudy that he couldn’t see much anyway.

Instead of relying on their eyes, the divers shimmied along the bottom, probing in front of themselves with a three-foot-long section of PVC pipe not much thicker than a conductor’s wand.

”That’s also for alligators,” said the elder Borrero, “so they don’t just stick their hands in its mouth.”

He communicates with the divers through the rope. Two tugs means they have found something; four tugs is a cry for help.

Kevin Garvey, a trapper for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, sat nearby in his truck. ”This canal’s well-known for alligators,” he said. “I took one out two days before Easter, 13 feet and at least a thousand pounds.”

But he offered these words of assurance for the divers on the bottom: “Pretty much the majority of the time they do their attacking above the surface.”

Perry got the idea to focus on canal searches in 2006 after divers hired by Mathew Stirling’s family discovered the missing teen’s body still strapped in the driver’s seat of his Ford 150 pickup at the bottom of the canal along U.S. 27 near Griffin Road.

Dozens of other cars were submerged there, too. Stirling’s family, joined by Perry, pressured the Broward Sheriff’s Office to pull them out. No other bodies turned up, but many of the vehicles had been reported stolen, police discovered.

YIELDING SECRETS

Since then, McManus and Perry decided that South Florida’s canals — many of them as deep as 15 feet — must surrender their secrets. If police can’t do it, or won’t, than the women resolved to do it themselves.

On Saturday, after five hours searching several hundred yards of the canal, they found a motorcycle, a golf cart, a six-foot section of guardrail and one ”very small” alligator, which moved away quickly, said the younger Borrero.

Perry called the day a success. “We’re absolutely going to keep doing it. That way, at least we’ll know what’s in these canals.”

Original Article