DALLAS — All Shandonder Wesley has is one faded picture of her mother.
For nearly 34 years, she has wondered what happened to that woman, who disappeared in 1981 without a trace.
Wesley doesn't remember her mother, nor does she really know much about her. But finally — after months of trying — she has convinced the Dallas Police Department to re-open the case into the disappearance of her mother, Shonna Wesley.
Last week, detectives took a DNA sample from Shandonder Wesley.
"It makes me feel good that that I'm not going at it alone anymore," she said. "Somebody cares besides me."
On the same day her mother disappeared, Wesley was found abandoned in a South Oak Cliff apartment complex. She was two years old at the time, wearing only a shirt and diaper when discovered.
"We were said to be on our way to the store to meet with her boyfriend at the time and never returned," Wesley said. She has heard stories that a man and woman may have dropped her off.
No one knew who she was for a week after turning up in 1981, and Wesley was placed in foster care. Her mother recognized her when her article and picture ran in the newspaper. A picture shows them being reunited.
In the meantime, her mother's boyfriend had contacted her grandmother, telling her that Shonna Wesley had gone missing. Her grandmother filed a missing persons report on June 2, 1981.
Wesley's grandmother told police her daughter's clothing was not missing, but a lot of her granddaughters' wardrobe was gone.
"As much as she loved this baby, she wouldn't just walk away and leave," her grandmother, Mary Wesley, told The Dallas Morning News. "I think something else is keeping her from coming back."
Shandonder Wesley says her grandmother, who raised her, didn't talk much about what was behind her mother's disappearance.
"She wanted to make me feel like she was my mother," Wesley said. "She would say things like, 'Your mother loved you. She would never leave you.' She wanted me to know that."
Wesley's grandmother died in 2002.
"It really hit home when she passed away," she said. "That hole was reopened."
She says she has suspicions about her mother's boyfriend, and would like to know if he knows something.
Now a mother herself, Shandonder Wesley just needs to know what happened to the mother she never knew.
"I know that I can't grow old not trying," she said. "I mean, if I find nothing, then I find nothing. But I at least want to try. Or if she is out there, I least want her to see that I'm reaching out to her and maybe she'll reach out to me. If for any reason there was a tragedy and she is deceased, I would like to know that, too. Again: Either way is closure for me."
