DETROIT – “I’m not thinking about nothing else. Just finding [CJ], that’s it,” said Dean Quemasi, a father desperate to find his daughter.
Quemasi was searching near Conner Street and Mack Avenue in Detroit on Tuesday (Jan. 28) for his 31-year-old daughter, Cher Jon, known as CJ.
This isn’t CJ’s first time missing, but her family is deeply worried. She was last seen on video near I-75 and Warren Avenue early Monday afternoon.
“I just got a call that she was over here in a van, possibly,” Quemasi said. “The only reason why I believe it is because it sounded like her.”
Quemasi shares the desperation that so many families in Detroit do — where the number of missing person cases has been climbing.
This crisis is what prompted Detroit City Council President Mary Sheffield to propose a new idea: a citywide alert system specifically for missing women.
“There’s higher thresholds that have to be met for an Amber Alert to go off,” Sheffield said. “But maybe we can have something internally in the city that notifies individuals if a young person is missing, who to call, and how to report it.”
Detroit police told Local 4 that there were 2,338 missing person reports in 2021, 2,583 in 2022, and 2,629 in 2023. The biggest increase was in 2024 when Detroit police reported 3,246 missing person cases.
Sheffield said alongside this rise, post-pandemic calls related to domestic violence and human trafficking are also surging.
“We’re open to what other alternatives are available to create awareness and initiatives around this issue to prevent those situations from taking place,” Sheffield said.
Detroit police are exploring the feasibility of an alert system, which could make all the difference for families like Quemasi’s. As he tirelessly searches, he believes in the power of such initiatives to bring more attention to missing persons.
“You plaster us with everything else — buy this, buy that,” Quemasi said. “Why not look out for this person? It takes a few seconds.”
