Twelve-year-old Yuan Xia Wang was last seen on October 21, 1998, in Alexandria, Virginia, after getting off her school bus near Lincolnia Road and Deming Avenue at about 3:00 p.m. She had been smuggled into the United States from Fuzhou, China, arriving at Dulles International Airport on August 25, 1998, with a man who claimed to be her uncle; that man was later arrested for passport fraud. Unable to speak English or Thai, Yuan communicated through a Mandarin translator and was placed with a foster family in Alexandria, where she attended Holmes Middle School as the only Mandarin-speaking student.

That afternoon she should have met a taxi at 3:30 p.m. for a doctor’s appointment but never arrived. A neighborhood search produced no clues and investigators noted she was unfamiliar with the area. Theories reported include the possibility she ran away for fear of being sent back to China and the alternative that she was abducted, perhaps by people connected to the smuggling ring; a foster father later said he’d been warned that the Chinese mafia might be looking for her. A 2008 tip placed her in the Kansas City, Missouri, area but it was not substantiated.

Does anyone who lived near Holmes Middle School in 1998 or who knew Yuan’s foster family remember seeing her that afternoon or have information about the 2008 tip?