Local families seek their loved ones at missing-persons event.

Adalberto Chavez came to the United States at age 16. He spent years in Houston before returning to Mexico in 2010 to visit his ill father. He never made it back. Because of disappearances like this one— disappearances that happen often to unauthorized migrants and the mentally ill — the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences initiated its 2nd annual Missing in Harris County Day on Saturday at University of Houston Clear Lake. Chavez’s family came last year and, as a result, they got a call in November saying that forensic scientists had identified Chavez’s body.

“He may not be with us here in person, but he’s here spiritually,” said Yesseinia Olvera, Chavez’s niece. ‘Not there by choice’

Olvera said her family had been contacted by the man who was supposed to get Chavez across the border. He told her that he had left Chavez behind at a place where immigration officers should have been able to find him in time. They did not.

“In Texas alone, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of missing migrants,” said Christine Kovic, an anthropology professor at UHCL and panelist at the event. “People shouldn’t be dying crossing the border. Many are trying to reach loved ones here in Houston.”

During the event, people with missing family members had access to resources from the Harris County Sheriff’s office, the Texas Center for the Missing, the South Texas Human-Rights Center and more to guide them along the process of finding their missing person.

Another partner in the event, HPD, has undergone a transformation in the way it thinks about missing persons.

“We have to realize that a lot of those people — prostitutes, labor — may not necessarily be there by choice,” said Lt. Manuel Cruz Jr., a 24-year veteran of HPD assigned to the juveniles department.

In the past, those people would have been treated as criminals and taken into custody. Now, though, they think of them as exploited people who have landed in situations through abduction or trafficking.

Cruz, who said HPD gets around 10,000 missing persons reports per month, works with an initiative to teach patrol officers to look for signs of exploited people while on the streets.

“We’re looking for them all the time,” Cruz said.

As a result of last year’s event, seven bodies have been identified, said Sharon Derrick, the identification manager for the Harris County Institute for Foreign Sciences.

“(Without the event) all you can really do is pull DNA. You can’t talk or ask questions,” Derrick said. “This will specifically target those investigations.”

That happened for Carol Haaga last year almost instantly. Within a few days of the event, they had identified the body of her son, Paul Schurm, whom she hadn’t seen since his birthday in March.

“I kind of knew right away something was very, very wrong,” Haaga said. Care a ‘catastrophe’

After a few days, she started filing reports. Eventually, she started calling morgues to see if any anonymous persons had turned up

When a police officer helped her fill out a missing persons report, Haaga told the officer that Schurm was mentally ill, homeless and using drugs. She said the officer acted as if this was reason for his disappearance, but Haaga stressed that Schurm was homeless by choice and a selfless friend — not traits she associated with someone who might disappear.

“The way we take care of the mentally ill — it’s also a humanitarian catastrophe,” Haaga said. “We look at them as pariahs. They’re not. We have a governor who doesn’t even believe in mental illness. We’ve got a problem.” trey.strange@chron.com