My name is Libba Phillips, and the story of Outpost for Hope began 12 years ago when my sister Ashley disappeared. She was mentally ill, drug-addicted, and homeless when she vanished. I was from a 'relatively typical' family and never thought my life was going to begin such a journey.

When Ashley went missing, my family did what most families would do. We appealed to authorities to file a missing persons report. It seemed simple enough. Ashley was missing. For the next four years, this report went unfiled. We searched for Ashley on our own.

We began the difficult process of searching for Ashley with only a handful of handmade flyers. There was no cadre of volunteers, combing the streets with flashlights; no candlelight vigils glowed in the night skies, and no reporters flashed Ashley's picture in the news. No one seemed to care about a missing homeless woman who appeared to be choosing to live on the streets. And to others, she was nothing more than a drug addict whose disappearance was not deemed worthy of an official investigation.

I documented what I experienced as I searched homeless shelters and met with countless officials. I pleaded with law enforcement agents for help and looked at hundreds of images of unidentified remains. Each time I said, "No. That's not Ashley," but my heart bled as I knew these lifeless bodies were the sisters/daughters/friends of someone.

I began to realize that if Ashley was not listed as missing, the odds of her ever being found and helped, if she indeed was still alive and lost somewhere on the streets among the homeless, were slim at best. The odds of her body being identified if she was dead were even lower.

Outpost for Hope started as a place for me to log my information and to help others who faced the same roadblocks as I faced. I also began volunteering with The Doe Network, an organization who assists law enforcement to connect missing persons cases with John/Jane Doe cases. My fellow "online searching sleuths" were the only ones who understood the disparity between someone who was officially reported as a missing person and someone who was lost but not officially reported as such. Were the real number of people who were missing reported by law enforcement in a database, the number of missing persons would skyrocket from 100,000 to as many as 2 million.

Ashley was no longer missing. She was now part of the "missing, missing" a voiceless group, numbering in the millions that law enforcement ignored and left unreported. People didn't understand why or how a homeless woman may be missing. She was just the "crazy crack addict" who didn't deserve help. Why would anyone list her in a database?

If people understood what mental illness looked like, the world of homelessness and helpfulness would be different.

As I continued my search, I started to share my story with the media. Marquita Plomer wrote an in-depth report about Ashley and Outpost for Hope in 2002, ultimately defining the mission of the organization. Her efforts helped my family and I to get an official missing persons report filed on Ashley, four years after our search began.

Ashley was located in the spring of 2003, she was 8 months pregnant - a consideration I had never thought about. What would have happened to the child if we had not found Ashley? The outcomes for what I call a 'kid off the grid' are are heart wrenching. In fact, we have found Ashley several times as she continues to struggle with mental illness and addiction, and we cannot always keep her safe.

I do think our story has some happy outcomes, even as Ashley appears and disappears from our lives. When she was found the first time - we were able to ensure that her baby was not raised on the streets or worse. And because of our search, we know the struggles that families go through, and we have helped hundreds of people navigate the system of finding "missing, missing" persons. For that we are grateful. But we need your help to not only survive but to thrive - and do whatever is necessary to help the most vulnerable.

Ours is not a perfect world, but we are committed at Outpost for Hope to help make our part of it a little better.

Libba Phillips, Founder of Outpost for Hope

www.libbaphillips.com