Mother Of Missing Woman Singlehandedly Brings Her Home

After nearly two months, 23-year-old TiJae Baker is now home safe and sound. None of this would have been made possible without the heroic efforts of her mother, Toquanna.

TiJae Baker went missing on May 1, 2022. She was last seen taking a bus from East New York to Washington, D.C. Baker was an art major who was meeting a potential client for whom she was hoping to design some posters. Her mother, Toquanna Baker, now believes that this was all a ruse to lure her to the capital. She immediately raised the alarm to the police. However, they were not so convinced that anything nefarious had taken place. They suggested to Toquanna that her daughter had used the trip to run away from home.

Toquanna wasn’t buying it. She began making posters of her own that she plastered all throughout the neighborhood.

“The police department has their own copy of their missing persons report, but the detective only came up there one time and only saw one poster out of the whole mall,” said Toquanna Baker. “I’ve already been [there] five times and every store had a poster because of me.”

The efforts of this determined mother would soon pay off. She was almost immediately inundated with tips with regard to the whereabouts of her daughter. Then, on June 1, 2022, TiJae herself called her mom. She was calling from a nail salon in Maryland and was pleading for her mother to come and get her. Toquanna dropped everything and traveled to that exact nail salon, but she was too late. TiJae was already gone. Toquanna was, however, able to use that location to start narrowing down where her daughter could possibly be staying. A tipster told her that they had seen TiJae sleeping in Prince George County bus stations. There was also a store in the area that told Toquanna they had seen someone matching her daughter’s description looking for food. A security guard had also seen the missing college graduate. All of this information was starting to give Toquanna an idea of where she could find her daughter.

Then, the final tip came in.

A bus driver reached out to Toquanna to inform her that TiJae was one of her passengers. When Toquanna got to the bus station, she was reunited with her daughter after almost two months of searching. Toquanna learned that her daughter had been kidnapped and was shown pictures of her wounds from the attack.

“She’s very frightened, she wants to go into hiding,” said Toquanna Baker. “I will have to deal with the after-effects when I get my daughter and her life will never be the same. My life will never be the same. This wasn’t something that she went out and did and [sought] for herself. This was done to her.”

Darlene Mealy and Charles Baron — both New York City Councilmembers — helped Toquanna in her initial search for her daughter. They were heavily involved in the outreach needed to get her case in front of the public. They are on the record as being disgusted with how the police handle the cases of missing people when that person is black.

“She did the police work, Ms. Baker should get the salary of all of those police officers that are supposed to be looking for her daughter in Washington, D.C., and here in New York,” said Barron. “I want to publicly criticize the police here in New York, and especially in D.C. If this was a white person, it would have been all-points bulletin out. They did not treat this case like that.”

Toquanna Baker is an absolute hero. Her determination should be an inspiration for any parent who ever has to endure such a tragic event.

“I want mothers and fathers who have missing girls and boys that are missing [to know] please do not give up because she could have easily given up and turned it over to the police and let them do their work,” said Mealy. “She didn’t. She kept the fire burning, [wanting] her child to come home. And her child is home.”