NANAIMO — When she turned on the news Monday night, Dolly Chang was devastated to hear that the RCMP suspect foul play in the disappearance of her granddaughter Makayla.
“My God,” said Chang, her eyes brimming with tears.
“I’ve been trying to be positive, hoping she’s just doing her 16-year-old thing. But her social media stuff has gone quiet. No one has heard from her.”
The last time Chang saw Makayla was March 11. The last text she received from the petite, red-headed teen, who was normally glued to her iPhone, was on March 19.
Chang’s daughter, Tina, has travelled to Nanaimo to be with her mother, as they wait for word on what’s happened to Makayla.
“I’ve been walking in circles,” said Chang, seated at the kitchen table in her well-kept home in the Sea Breeze Mobile Home Park.
“The first couple of weeks were horrible because I was by myself. When I went out and came back home, I expected to see Makayla here, or walk through the door, or call me: ‘Grandma, can you pick me up in Harewood?’ It didn’t happen.”
On March 22, when she hadn’t heard from Makayla in three days — which had never happened before — Chang went to the Tim Hortons on Wallace Street where Makayla spent much of her time.
The teens there told her that Steven Michael Bacon, a 53-year-old Nanaimo man who had befriended Makayla, had gone to the police station to report her missing.
“He had no right to do that,” Chang said.
“I went up there, too. He told me outside the police station: ‘You might as well know, Makayla’s been staying at my place for the last two months.’ I didn’t know that so I was really, really mad.”
Makayla has lived with Chang since she was three years old. Both of her parents struggle with addiction. Her mother, who has helped with the search, lives in Nanaimo. Her father Kerry is serving time at the Vancouver Island Regional Correctional Centre in Saanich.
This year, just before her March 1 birthday, Makayla started saying “Just wait until I turn 16. I can go do what I want, see who I want, live with who I want,” Chang recalled.
“She was doing a lot of lying to me, saying she was staying at a girlfriend’s place when I guess she was at Steve’s.”
There is no love lost between Chang and Bacon. Chang feels Makayla’s relationship with him is inappropriate. She said Bacon was preying on Makayla, supplying her with cigarettes, buying her things, promising her a dog. Bacon was always at the Tim Hortons sitting with the kids. “I hated him so much. I’ve been complaining about him since last June.”
Chang has a letter Bacon sent to Makayla. The three-page handwritten letter begins “My Dearest Baby Bird.” Bacon calls Makayla “the most precious person he has ever known” and says he wants to adopt Makayla. He says she reminds him of a daughter he lost.
“The happiness of having you in my life and the total and unconditional love is the same as if you were my own child,” writes Bacon.
In August, Chang complained about Bacon to the Nanaimo RCMP, but was told there was not much they could do.
Chang and her daughter Tina are remembering Makayla as a girl who made friends easily, loved singing and once brought home a pot-bellied pig.
“She’s a total drama queen,” said Chang. “She went to school to socialize, not for academics.”
“But she was the most naive and gullible little girl you’d ever meet,” added Tina.
Chang got her into three different high schools in the past year, but Makayla didn’t stick it out.
On the first day of her last school, she wore a wig and a tuque and someone called her a crack head, so she didn’t go back.
“Makayla is so stubborn. She believed what her friends said. She wouldn’t listen to me. I warned her lots of times,” said Chang.
Makayla was last seen in downtown Nanaimo on March 17. At first, police were searching for both Chang and Bacon. On April 5, Nanaimo RCMP said they had located Bacon. Police did not say where Bacon was or whether he knew of Makayla’s whereabouts.
Police have searched the ravine area of Colliery Dam and Cat Stream Park. The RCMP and a tactical team have executed search warrants twice at 609 Bruce Ave. where Bacon lived in the basement suite and Makayla was known to stay. On Monday, police searched both inside and outside the property. They also searched a vacant property at 601 Bruce Ave.
Given the amount of time that she has been missing and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, foul play cannot be ruled out, said an RCMP press release.
> A father’s anguish, A2
