Dateline Missing in America – Ep. 21: Taking Teekah

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Speaker 3 You could feel the energy the moment you walked in.

Speaker 12 Laughter echoed off the walls.

Speaker 13 The smell of burgers and fries hung in the air.

Speaker 3 Bowling balls rumbled down lanes, followed by the clatter of pins.

Speaker 3 This was a Saturday night in Tacoma, Washington.

Speaker 16 There were a lot of people there that night.

Speaker 10 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 10 At least 350.

Speaker 3 January 23rd, 1999.

Speaker 12 The Neon sign read, New Frontier Lanes.

Speaker 3 That glow drew people in on a damp, chilly evening.

Speaker 17 Teresa Chapeski was one of them.

Speaker 10 So we get there and we get our shoes and we go to our lanes.

Speaker 3 Teresa was there with two of her daughters, her boyfriend, some family, and some friends.

Speaker 10 And Tika sees the video games.

Speaker 20 Tika was Teresa's two-year-old.

Speaker 16 She picked out a game over in the bowling alley's arcade.

Speaker 10 It was my turn to bowl, and I told my brother and my boyfriend, make sure you watch Tika so nobody, you know, nothing happens to her.

Speaker 17 Teresa bowled her frame, and

Speaker 16 something did happen.

Speaker 10 She was gone.

Speaker 17 That was more than two decades ago.

Speaker 7 The search for Tika began that night, and it still is not over.

Speaker 10 My kids have suffered for 26 years, not knowing where their sister's been.

Speaker 11 I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Missing in America, a podcast from Dateline.

Speaker 26 This episode is taking Tika.

Speaker 28 Please listen closely because you or someone you know might have information that could help solve this case and finally give Tika's family the answers they've been searching for.

Speaker 10 I'm going to do my part

Speaker 10 to find what happened to my daughter.

Speaker 20 Tacoma, Washington is a city of contrasts.

Speaker 12 Industrial streets buzzing with life.

Speaker 18 Mount Rainier a quiet giant in the distance.

Speaker 14 In one house on Tacoma's east side, life was anything but quiet.

Speaker 31 Tell me what it's like having all those daughters around.

Speaker 5 Whoa,

Speaker 10 I could say that. You know,

Speaker 10 a lot of emotions going on in the house and

Speaker 10 different attitudes,

Speaker 10 but they're my everything.

Speaker 30 Teresa, by every definition, is a girl mom.

Speaker 30 Back then, she was 27.

Speaker 20 and raising five daughters on her own.

Speaker 6 It was always fun times in the house.

Speaker 28 That's Katerina, Tika's older sister.

Speaker 18 Back in 1999, she was six years old.

Speaker 6 She was such an energetic little girl. She had the prettiest big brown eyes.
She was so loving and just always wanting to be around her big sisters or around her mother.

Speaker 10 She slept with mama. She went with me everywhere.
I couldn't go nowhere without her.

Speaker 33 That's why you took her to the bowling alley.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 10 Teresa says that saturday started out normally me and my boyfriend and um my three daughters we went on post he was in the military then yes he was in the military and on our way home we stopped at taco bell to get the kids some food teresa says her eldest twin daughters were already with their godmother She dropped Katarina off with her aunt before the evening began.

Speaker 6 I can see how four or five kids around, you know, when it's bowling, it can be a lot. So.

Speaker 29 So maybe you want to park some of them somewhere else.

Speaker 5 Right. Right.

Speaker 12 Teresa got her youngest two, Tika and Tamika, ready for a night at the bowling alley.

Speaker 24 Tell me what Tika was wearing that day.

Speaker 10 Green Tweety Bird shirt, white sweats, and white and black Air Jordans. And her hair was up in a ponytail.

Speaker 19 New Frontier Lane seemed the safest of places.

Speaker 36 Was that a place you regularly went?

Speaker 10 The week before, I went and I took my twins, and there was nobody in there. So I wasn't worried.
So I said, well, hey, we'll go back the next week.

Speaker 10 I wish I would have never went because that's when the nightmare started.

Speaker 18 By around 10 p.m., the big group was settled at their lanes.

Speaker 19 Teresa kept an eye on her 10-month-old Tamika, who sat in her carrier, and on Tika, who ran back back and forth between her and the arcade.

Speaker 10 And she seen her uncle go up there and her uncle was playing the game and he won a stuffed animal and he gave it to his niece and Tika you know she gave it to her baby sister.

Speaker 24 So he gave it to Tika and she gave it to Tamika.

Speaker 4 Yep.

Speaker 10 Her sister still has that bear.

Speaker 33 Then Tika spotted a racing game.

Speaker 16 And she was at that driving game when you went to bowl.

Speaker 10 Oh yeah, she was there. I seen her.

Speaker 17 Teresa says that's when she told her boyfriend and brother to watch Tika while she bowled.

Speaker 27 Her attention was diverted for maybe 15 seconds.

Speaker 10 And I turned back around

Speaker 10 and I looked up and I asked them, where's Tika? And they were like, she's up there.

Speaker 21 They assumed Tika was still playing in the crowded arcade and just couldn't see her.

Speaker 3 After all, she was quite small.

Speaker 10 I went up to the game, looked in between the games, around the corner. I went to the end of the bowling alley and went into the bathroom down there.
She was nowhere around.

Speaker 37 And you're getting a little bit more frantic every second.

Speaker 10 Oh, yeah, because I know my baby wouldn't leave me.

Speaker 12 Teresa rushed into another bathroom and ran right into her sister-in-law.

Speaker 10 And I asked her, have you seen Tika? And she said, no, she's not in here. And so I went up to the announcement desk because there was an officer there.

Speaker 10 He was off duty and I told him, I said, my daughter's gone.

Speaker 3 The officer got on the PA system, telling everyone to watch for a two-year-old in a green Tweety Bird shirt.

Speaker 13 20 minutes later, He called for backup. When officers from the Tacoma Police Department arrived, Teresa met them outside.

Speaker 10 I was with the officer at one corner of the entrance. My sister-in-law comes to me and said, Hey, that woman has your daughter.

Speaker 3 That's when things took another frightening turn.

Speaker 10 And I was like, What do you mean she has my daughter?

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Speaker 13 Teresa Chapeski was outside the bowling alley, talking with officers about her missing two-year-old daughter, Tika.

Speaker 12 That's when her sister-in-law told her a woman had her daughter.

Speaker 10 And I was like, what do you mean she has my daughter? She has her baby in her car and she's getting ready to leave.

Speaker 24 Teresa was living a nightmare, frantically looking for Tika.

Speaker 3 And then suddenly, that nightmare had a new dimension. Someone had grabbed her other daughter, Tamika.

Speaker 13 We're not talking about Tika here.

Speaker 17 We're talking about Tamika.

Speaker 10 We're talking about Tamika, my 10-month-old, at the time.

Speaker 17 In the chaos of the search for Tika, a woman had gathered up Tamika and was about to leave with her.

Speaker 13 Teresa ran to the car and saw her daughter Tamika with

Speaker 16 a woman who had been sitting behind their group in the bowling alley earlier that evening.

Speaker 3 Someone who had made Teresa and her brother uncomfortable.

Speaker 10 She was asking us, can I hold your baby?

Speaker 17 The woman asked to hold her brother's baby, and he let her.

Speaker 33 But then.

Speaker 10 She wouldn't give my nephew back to him. And so he told her, give me my son, or we're going to have problems in here.

Speaker 31 That's very alarming.

Speaker 10 Very.

Speaker 4 Very.

Speaker 17 Her name was Rita Miller.

Speaker 21 She was in her 30s.

Speaker 24 And now she had Tamika.

Speaker 10 And she took her to her car?

Speaker 3 Rita had strapped Tamika into her car and was ready to drive off.

Speaker 10 And I told her, that's my daughter. Give her back.
She was like, no, that's not your daughter. And I said, if you don't give me my daughter, I'm bringing the police.

Speaker 3 Rita refused.

Speaker 36 They have to physically.

Speaker 47 take Tamika back from this woman and give her back to Teresa, who's still searching for Tika.

Speaker 43 Yes, something along those lines.

Speaker 13 That's Sergeant Julie Deere of the Tacoma Police Department.

Speaker 17 She inherited this case in 2021.

Speaker 19 And for her, this

Speaker 18 was personal.

Speaker 43 So when I was 10 years old, somebody broke into our house and almost yanked me out of bed. He grabbed my arm, said my mom wanted me.
She told him to come get me.

Speaker 43 My sister woke up, started yelling, and then so he let go of me and ran away.

Speaker 49 Deere's family had emigrated from Russia to Tacoma.

Speaker 15 She says her parents reported the incident to police, but no one really followed up.

Speaker 43 Since we were immigrants and my parents didn't speak very good English and kind of got thrown to the wayside, the whole reporting issue, and it wasn't looked into.

Speaker 33 For Sergeant Deere, Tika's case is more than just a file.

Speaker 14 It is a chance to do what no one did.

Speaker 3 for her.

Speaker 43 So that made an impact as far as how I look at some of these cases.

Speaker 26 Deere says officers back then quickly realized Rita, the woman who tried to take Tamika, had mental health issues.

Speaker 43 They put her in a patrol car and while she was in a patrol car, she had

Speaker 43 made an attempt on her own life and she had to get involuntarily committed.

Speaker 11 Tamika was now safely in her mother's arms.

Speaker 21 At the same time, Tika was still missing.

Speaker 3 Did Rita know where she was?

Speaker 17 If so, one thing was certain.

Speaker 13 She was not talking.

Speaker 3 Not that night anyway.

Speaker 33 Teresa spent hours at the bowling alley, searching, talking with police.

Speaker 12 Soon, there was not much else for Teresa to do but go home and pray for answers.

Speaker 3 She also had to tell her girls, including Katarina. who was six.

Speaker 6 So my mom had called my Aunt Rose and told her that we needed to go to my grandma's house. Everybody was meeting up there that, you know, something had happened.

Speaker 6 Let my godmom know so my older sisters could come as well.

Speaker 17 And what did you think had happened?

Speaker 6 I think like a car accident or something. Like nothing, nothing serious or nothing happened to my sisters.
But no, my mom comes in. She's crying, like just...

Speaker 6 face red, blotchy, just crying hysterical, coming in and was like, you know, Tika's gone. Tika's not with us.
She's missing

Speaker 6 a missing sister is hard for any child to comprehend it didn't really sink in until like a couple of days later when I'm looking around and Tika's not here you know like where is she where is she at why why isn't my sister here the days and weeks that followed were a whirlwind Police and volunteers fanned out across the wooded area around the bowling alley, searching, hoping for any clue if you find anything at all that you think is of interest don't pick it up

Speaker 49 four dozen volunteers stand shoulder to shoulder

Speaker 28 searching for clues into the disappearance of two-year-old tika lewis it feels like law enforcement really responded from the get-go

Speaker 43 They were out there, yes. There were multiple teams of different

Speaker 43 people out there. Search and rescue was out there.
The FBI came out. Everybody, I mean, everybody participated in this.

Speaker 36 What kind of searches did they do and what areas were they searching?

Speaker 43 So, grid searches, I want to say they did the helicopter searches and knocking on doors and canvassing. People went out literally to apartment complexes, just knocking on every single door.

Speaker 43 Hey, have you heard anything? Do you know anything? Have you seen anything? Type of thing.

Speaker 16 None of that led anywhere.

Speaker 43 No.

Speaker 17 You didn't find anything that led back to Tika.

Speaker 38 You find anything else?

Speaker 43 They did find some clothing that were folded in the wooded area. And that's still in evidence.
But nobody knows whose it is.

Speaker 12 Teresa appeared on local TV in anguish.

Speaker 50 To that person or persons who has my daughter, how can you live with yourself knowing you have someone else's daughter? All I ask is for you to bring my daughter home safely.

Speaker 6 That's when people started to ask, like, hey, you know, we see you on the news, we see your mom on the news,

Speaker 6 talking about how your sister is not here anymore. Do you know what happened?

Speaker 48 Katarina's classmates had tons of questions.

Speaker 19 She had no answers.

Speaker 17 No one did.

Speaker 21 Weeks became months.

Speaker 22 Still no sign of Tika.

Speaker 21 Then a disturbing story surfaced.

Speaker 29 Teresa heard about something that had happened just months before Tika vanished at the very same bowling alley.

Speaker 17 A man assaults a little boy in the bathroom of that bowling alley.

Speaker 4 Exactly.

Speaker 33 Sergeant Deere says the man sexually attacked the boy, then took off. A witness described him as a white male with curly brown hair and a beard.

Speaker 3 Teresa had to wonder, could that man have abducted Tika?

Speaker 15 Police were asking the same question, except they never caught that man.

Speaker 3 It was a lead that went nowhere.

Speaker 43 There were several incidents that happened and everything was investigated.

Speaker 17 Teresa heard another story about something that happened at a park near the bowling alley.

Speaker 3 The same day Tika vanished, a man was seen trying to motion kids into a bathroom.

Speaker 27 According to police reports obtained by Dateline, The man, described as a white male with dark hair, was chased off and drove away in a blue Pontiac Grand Am.

Speaker 33 It's not clear if that man was ever found, and Sergeant Deere says she doesn't know much about that incident.

Speaker 3 However, the detail about the car that man drove seemed to match up with a report from another witness in Tika's disappearance.

Speaker 43 At about 1020 is when the

Speaker 43 announcements were started being made about the missing girl.

Speaker 43 And around the same time, a lady was pulling into the Bowling Alley parking lot and she said that a Pontiac Grandam pulled out of there super fast, almost running into her.

Speaker 43 And she was shown a montage of different cars and the one that she picked out most matched a Pontiac Grandam. The color, she said, appeared to be like a

Speaker 43 reddish, almost purplish color.

Speaker 43 And

Speaker 43 the year maybe 98, 99.

Speaker 36 No license plate.

Speaker 43 She She didn't get a license plate.

Speaker 20 Could the driver of that Grand Am have taken Tika?

Speaker 47 And no information on who might have been driving or who else might have been in the car?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 29 What do you do with that information?

Speaker 43 Well, back then, they looked at any owners of Pontiacs, and I don't think it provided anything good back then.

Speaker 33 The case eventually went cold.

Speaker 21 Tika never left her sister's hearts.

Speaker 6 We used to do like a song. We would sing like Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, but we would add Tika's name into it and we would be like, you know, we wonder where you are.

Speaker 19 Birthdays came and went.

Speaker 13 July 4th is a little different for you than it is for the rest of us, isn't it?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 50 The 4th of July is her birthday.

Speaker 20 Every year, Teresa blew out a candle for her daughter.

Speaker 11 Her wish, the same one every time,

Speaker 18 to finally have an answer.

Speaker 17 Would that wish of hers ever come true?

Speaker 14 A potential break in the case was coming.

Speaker 32 Police will not say what the tip was or what cold case it is related to.

Speaker 19 26 years later, a mysterious tip and a massive search that could change everything.

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Speaker 33 22 years after Tika Lewis disappeared, Sergeant Julie Deere was handed the case file.

Speaker 19 She picked up where detectives before her left off, starting with Rita Miller, the woman who was stopped from kidnapping Tika's 10-month-old baby sister that night.

Speaker 31 What made you want to keep going on that?

Speaker 43 So, I mean, it was obviously a question that had remained not fully answered. And Teresa kept bringing it up.
So I wanted to answer that for her as well.

Speaker 43 And so I found her, and she lives in a home right now for certain individuals.

Speaker 47 Her mental condition has deteriorated too much for her to be of any help.

Speaker 43 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 43 She's not quite there.

Speaker 33 Teresa believes something should have been done about Rita much sooner.

Speaker 10 She should have been charged that night for attempted deduction of my 10-month-old, but she wasn't.

Speaker 16 And now she's not in any condition to help.

Speaker 3 None at all.

Speaker 37 Deere says says she can't speak for the actions of the investigators who came before her, but says many good detectives work the case.

Speaker 13 If they thought Rita was connected to Tika's disappearance, she says, they would have followed that lead to the end.

Speaker 3 It might have been too late to ask Rita what she may or may not have known.

Speaker 33 It was not too late for Sergeant Deere to chase down another lead,

Speaker 33 one that detectives before her had already started looking into.

Speaker 15 A 911 call placed on the night of Tika's disappearance.

Speaker 43 The phone call wasn't discovered until around 2020. That's when COVID happened.
And I think people started looking into it and then all hell broke loose.

Speaker 19 It was from a mother who said her adult son was acting strangely.

Speaker 43 Her son had made some suspicious statements to her, so she called for a welfare check on him.

Speaker 23 According to police reports, the man asked his mother if she would leave the country with him.

Speaker 43 She called and said

Speaker 43 he called and asked her if she would leave town with him if he needed to leave, or something along those lines, which is odd. Why would he need to leave town, particularly on that night?

Speaker 43 This was about two hours after Tika went missing. So that is what initially brought him to our attention.

Speaker 47 And I guess he lived near the bowling alley.

Speaker 3 He

Speaker 43 lived in the area and he at some point owned a Pontiac.

Speaker 46 Police know the man's name and so do we.

Speaker 26 However, for investigative reasons, they have asked us not to use it.

Speaker 3 So for this story, we're calling the man John Doe.

Speaker 20 So Mr.

Speaker 43 Doe was about maybe early 40s at the time that Tika disappeared. He

Speaker 43 was actually independently wealthy, but

Speaker 43 had some mental health issues and sexual deviancy issues. Nothing with children, mostly with adults.

Speaker 36 Give me some idea of what we're talking about with sexual deviancy here, because that's a pretty broad term.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 43 like calling his pastor's wife and telling her the things that he'd like to do with her and that sort of stuff.

Speaker 47 So like some harassment and intimidation things.

Speaker 43 Yeah, but things he'd like to do with her in a sexual nature.

Speaker 29 Did he have a criminal record?

Speaker 43 There was like petty stuff, maybe like car theft and things like that.

Speaker 47 This is not someone who'd been locked up on some sex charge or some offense regarding children.

Speaker 43 No, no, no, no.

Speaker 3 There was something else.

Speaker 33 Deere says Mr.

Speaker 17 Doe also matched the description of someone a witness saw at the bowling alley the night Tika vanished.

Speaker 43 It was maybe a couple days after it happened.

Speaker 43 It was a younger individual, a teenager, that had said that he saw what he thought was this man walking with a mixed-race little girl, and he thought it was odd.

Speaker 18 Back in 1999, That teenage witness said he saw the man lingering near the little girl as she played a driving game at the arcade.

Speaker 12 According to police reports, the teen later saw the man and the girl heading toward the front desk, and the man seemed to be trying to keep up with her.

Speaker 19 The witness said the man seemed nervous and out of place and described him as white with a pockmarked face and wearing a blue checkered flannel shirt.

Speaker 21 As police pieced it all together, they compared that witness description with a photo of John Doe.

Speaker 43 And when we looked at his booking photo, he had a pockmark face. He had maybe shoulder-ish, curly-ish hair.
He's a white male,

Speaker 43 early 40s. He matched that description.

Speaker 14 And the little girl he was seen with, Tika is black, white, and Native American.

Speaker 3 So that sounded a lot like her, too.

Speaker 17 20 years after Tika disappeared, Sergeant Deere says other officers tracked down that witness again, and his story remained mostly the same, but with one new detail.

Speaker 3 He added that he saw the man holding the little girl's hand and actually walking toward the front door to leave the bowling alley.

Speaker 17 Officers showed him a photo of John Doe, along with those of several other men.

Speaker 43 This was shown to

Speaker 43 the person that described

Speaker 43 the individual he thought he saw walking with Tika,

Speaker 43 and along with five other photos, which is what we call a photo montage.

Speaker 43 And he was unable to pick anybody on that photo montage, but apparently, when he saw that particular photo, he paused for a second, which kind of

Speaker 43 made an impression as well.

Speaker 14 Tika's mom says police showed her that same photo montage.

Speaker 10 In 2020, the detectives wanted me to come down

Speaker 10 to look at some photos.

Speaker 31 They're trying to see if you recognize someone from the bowling alley.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 10 I looked at them and I remember photo number three.

Speaker 10 And I believe I seen him that night at the bowling alley.

Speaker 30 Photo number three was John Doe.

Speaker 33 In November 2023, Sergeant Deere paid him a visit.

Speaker 3 The conversation did not yield much.

Speaker 21 Mr.

Speaker 13 Doe insisted he had never been to New Frontier Lanes.

Speaker 23 Yes, he said he did own a Pontiac, but claimed it was no match to the description of the one seen speeding away that night.

Speaker 43 So he

Speaker 43 owned a Pontiac at one point.

Speaker 43 And then he also rented a Pontiac.

Speaker 43 And the one that he owned, we talked to him about it, and he said it was actually a Pontiac Grand Prix. And he said it was fire red.

Speaker 43 And that's a completely different shaped vehicle. And then the one that he rented, I tried to run down the information on it since it was so long ago, I couldn't find any information on it.

Speaker 47 And he denied being there.

Speaker 43 He denied being there. He said that he never went bowling to that particular bowling alley.
So I can't put him in that area.

Speaker 3 Deer and her partner left John Doe's house with little more than they arrived with.

Speaker 19 When they returned months later, John Doe

Speaker 3 was gone.

Speaker 43 We went back to his house in January of 2024 and we were informed that he was deceased. Thankfully, he was recently deceased and the medical examiner had his,

Speaker 43 what we call a blood card, so we were able to collect that and get his DNA that way.

Speaker 47 So if you ever find a body or some other genetic material, you can match him to it or rule him out.

Speaker 43 Yes.

Speaker 14 Deere says the late John Doe died of natural causes and remains a person of interest.

Speaker 26 Teresa Chapeski believes he might have had the answers she's been waiting for.

Speaker 10 This man was sick. I think he harmed my daughter and then

Speaker 5 hurt her.

Speaker 10 And me as a mom, I'm going to do my part to find what happened to my daughter.

Speaker 25 Clearly, police were interested in this guy, but they couldn't build a case against him before he died.

Speaker 10 Because they waited all these years.

Speaker 17 You think they waited too long?

Speaker 10 Of course they did.

Speaker 17 Katerina shares her mother's feelings.

Speaker 6 Even though that this is one of our solid leads, it's not going to go anywhere.

Speaker 31 Whatever he knew, he took with him to the city.

Speaker 34 He took with him.

Speaker 6 So even if he was the person that did take Tico, we'll never know.

Speaker 29 Sergeant Deere says her department started investigating John Doe as soon as that information came in.

Speaker 30 But any action had to be legally supported and based on facts.

Speaker 16 That includes writing warrants, waiting on lab results, and following up on tips.

Speaker 17 It is all an evidentiary threshold.

Speaker 26 The public may not always appreciate.

Speaker 3 The truth is, we still don't know what happened to Tika.

Speaker 46 We don't know if John Doe had any involvement at all.

Speaker 24 We don't know if Tika simply wandered off.

Speaker 23 We do know this case is still making headlines.

Speaker 32 Neighbors are concerned and looking for answers as police continue to search the backyard of a Tacoma home.

Speaker 3 On May 19, 2025, A large-scale search began at a home in Tacoma, Washington, a location just a few minutes away from where Tika disappeared.

Speaker 54 Drone footage showed multiple tents set up and Tacoma police officers spread out across the property, digging.

Speaker 3 The department tried their best to keep the whole operation hush-hush.

Speaker 32 It could be any of the city's 147 cold cases.

Speaker 3 Who owned that property being searched?

Speaker 22 And what were officers hoping to find?

Speaker 33 On day three of the search, we spoke with Teresa by phone.

Speaker 21 She said there were whispers this search was for Tika.

Speaker 34 I was there yesterday morning and I seen the drone shots. And then

Speaker 34 I seen some last night and they're digging deeper into the ground. They brought more dogs out yesterday.

Speaker 30 Teresa says she spoke with neighbors to find out who lived at that home back in 1999.

Speaker 11 She found out some information, all of it speculative.

Speaker 3 There's a lady that lives across the street that has been there for 45 years, and she knows what was going on in that house.

Speaker 19 Then, while we were still on the phone, Teresa got another phone call.

Speaker 55 Can I call you right back?

Speaker 3 Teresa called us back.

Speaker 55 So that was the chief of police, and she confirmed that they were digging for Tika but they did not find her.

Speaker 19 Now she is experiencing the difficult mix of emotions so many families of the missing go through.

Speaker 12 It's both disappointment and relief.

Speaker 34 I'm relieved, but at the same time, we're back to square one.

Speaker 30 On May 21st, The Tacoma Police Department released a statement about the search.

Speaker 3 They confirmed it was related to to Tika and that a tip had prompted the investigation.

Speaker 17 The details of that tip remain unknown.

Speaker 38 Police said they exhaustively followed it for three days, but in the end, they found nothing.

Speaker 37 That's all police are saying at this point.

Speaker 26 Teresa is not giving up.

Speaker 10 I ask myself every day, who would want to harm a baby, and I hope one day I'll find out what happened to her.

Speaker 19 Sergeant Deere says she's still on this and it's still personal.

Speaker 43 At the time that I started looking at this case,

Speaker 43 I have a boy about the same age as Tika was when she went missing. So for me, just knowing how a parent could feel when a little person could go missing like that, for me, it just heart-wrenching.

Speaker 3 Tika has another little sister now, Tanika.

Speaker 33 Born just a few years after Tika went missing, Tanika never met her sister, of course.

Speaker 10 But we've told her everything about her. We showed her videos, pictures.
Everything she needs to know about her sister, she knows.

Speaker 33 Tanika knows the place where her sister vanished.

Speaker 16 New Frontier Lanes, January 23rd, 1999.

Speaker 29 The building itself is gone now.

Speaker 3 What remains are memories. Antika's is one of them.

Speaker 25 What's your advice to other parents?

Speaker 10 Hold your babies tight. Don't never let them go.
Don't trust nobody around your babies. Nobody.

Speaker 10 And if you're in a public setting, keep an eye on them. Because you never know.

Speaker 47 It can happen pretty fast, can't it?

Speaker 3 It can.

Speaker 10 If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

Speaker 3 Teresa's daughters are all adults now.

Speaker 30 Even so, through the years, they have always tried to gather and hold a vigil for Tika,

Speaker 26 the sister who isn't there.

Speaker 43 Every year.

Speaker 47 Does that help you?

Speaker 10 In a way, it kind of does.

Speaker 6 I still don't say too much at the vigils. You know, I stick to myself, so my silence, my prayers,

Speaker 6 I send them out every day for her.

Speaker 16 Every year, they pray for the little girl who vanished into that January night.

Speaker 10 Tika was my everything.

Speaker 4 Everything.

Speaker 10 Everybody has years and years with their kids. I had two and a half years with Tika, and it wasn't enough.

Speaker 20 Here is where you can help.

Speaker 24 Today, Tika Lewis would be 28 years old.

Speaker 16 On January 23rd, 1999, she was a child.

Speaker 29 three feet tall and 35 pounds.

Speaker 15 She had black hair, brown eyes, and pierced ears.

Speaker 3 She was wearing a green tweety bird t-shirt with sweatpants and red, white, and black air jordans.

Speaker 3 Anyone with information about Tika's disappearance is asked to call the Tacoma Police Department at 253-591-5950.

Speaker 16 To learn more about other people we've covered in our Missing in America series, go to datelinemissinginamerica.com.

Speaker 20 There, you'll be able to view age-progressed photos of Tika Lewis and also submit cases you think we should cover in the future.

Speaker 54 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 33 See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

Speaker 33 Missing in America is a production of Dateline and NBC News.

Speaker 49 Kiani Reed is the producer of this episode.

Speaker 3 Brian Drew is the audio editor.

Speaker 30 Bradley Davis is senior producer.

Speaker 16 Paul Ryan is executive producer.

Speaker 37 And Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

Speaker 29 From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Robert Ceciliano, Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

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