People keep asking me why I’m still searching for August.

Here’s the truest answer I have:
Because I can. And because I hope you would, too.

Because if your heart beat just a little louder —
if you heard a tremor in the universe,
a missing pulse,
a soft human who hasn’t come home —
I like to believe you’d go looking.

Even if you didn’t know him.
Even if he was 29, grown, and complicated.
Even if the world insists adulthood equals safety.
(Trust me, it doesn’t.)

Sometimes a brain goes haywire.
Sometimes it lights itself on fire.
Sometimes a person walks away naked into the snow
and doesn’t even know they’re gone.

I know this because once — I was the one who wandered.

---

New Year’s Eve, 2008

(which was technically still 2007 because time is a suggestion)

I had just moved to Salt Lake City.
A blizzard.
No friends yet.
Just two black labradors — Buddha and Stella —
who carried my heart on eight paws like it was their holy job.

I don’t remember the seizures.
I only remember becoming conscious in the snow.
Naked. Disoriented. Freezing. Alone.

Not metaphorically.
Actually and literally wandering the city,
no memory of how I got there,
no idea where “home” even was.

I saw the glow of a Smith’s supermarket.
Closed. Empty.
But a payphone in the vestibule leaked just enough light
to feel like a lifeline.

I remembered one number.
Collect.
My mother.

“Mom… I’m naked and cold and I don’t know where I am.”
“Jennifer, you’re in Utah.”
“Why would I do THAT?”

She called emergency services from Maryland.
She told them where to find her daughter
wandering state-newborn and soaked in snow.
They found me.
They wrapped me in blankets.
They got me home.

And when we arrived?
Every single light in my house was on.
Front door wide open.
Two dogs sitting guard — waiting.
Holding vigil over whatever was left of me.

If I hadn’t found that payphone,
if I hadn’t seen those lights,
if Buddha and Stella hadn’t anchored me to this world,
if — if — if —

I could have disappeared.
Forever.
Just like that.

No alert. No network.
No hey Utah, one of us is missing — go look.

That is my WHY.

That is why I search for August.
Because someone should.
Because his mother deserves not to wonder.
Because he deserves to be alive and found if he wants to be.

Because there is a world where that night was me
and nobody knew to sound an alarm.

---

Utah doesn’t have a PURPLE ALERT.

But it should.
Every state should.
A Purple Alert for adults who wander,
who are neurodivergent or vulnerable or lost in the fog of a burning brain.
Not a punishment.
Not a trap.
Not a “gotcha.”

Just a net.
A community rally.
A lifeline in the snow.

It is not a miracle.
But it could save one life.
And that is enough.

I have systems now.
Layers.
If I go missing again — alarms will go off.
Texts will fly.
People will look.

Not everyone has that.

August doesn’t have that.

He is missing.
Still.
And I’m not ready to stop searching.

If you’re reading this, you don’t have to know August to care.
You just have to remember something simple:

There was a night I could have been the one you were searching for.

And every mother deserves to sleep knowing
that if her child wanders naked into the snow —
a city will rise like hands to catch them.

💜 Utah deserves a PURPLE ALERT.
💜 August deserves to be found.
💜 And any one of us could be next.

If this moved you — share it.
Talk about Purple Alerts.
Help me make noise.

We’re still looking for August.
Let’s not stop.