She Was Selling Tickets For A School Fundraiser When She Vanished In 1988
On February 11, 1988, Jie Zhao Li, a 12-year-old living in Honolulu, Hawaii, went out to sell tickets for a school fundraiser. After she was last spotted at a nearby 7-Eleven store, Jie vanished, and she has remained missing for over 36 years.
“While she was there, she just simply disappeared,” stated retired HPD Homicide Lieutenant Gary Dias, who investigated the case.
“She never had a history of running away, and she didn’t have the personality, based on our discussions with the family, of being the type that would run away.”
Jie and her family had moved from China to Hawaii two years prior. With her parents and two sisters, she lived in an apartment located on Nuuanu Avenue and attended Royal Elementary School.
The day she went missing, Jie asked her mother, Ly Yan Li, to leave home and sell Zippy’s Chili tickets door-to-door as part of a fundraiser for a school trip.
Ly allowed Jie to go out, but she told her daughter to return by 6:00 p.m. Jie was reportedly even given a wristwatch by her mother to keep track of time.
It was about 4:45 p.m. when Jie went to a 7-Eleven located on the corner of Nuuanu Avenue and Kuakini Street. There, Jie was seen standing outside and speaking to people, asking if they wanted to buy any tickets.
This marked the last time anyone saw the 12-year-old. After Jie didn’t arrive back home at 6:00 p.m., her parents became worried, as that was very out of character.
“According to the family, she is a very obedient child. In fact, [she] was very dear to the heart of the parents,” said a spokesperson for the Li family in 1988.
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Jie’s parents went looking for her that evening, and she was officially reported missing the following morning.
Investigators launched a comprehensive search for Jie, including officers on foot who checked with neighbors and searched for witnesses and evidence; meanwhile, fliers were posted, and the news media began reporting on Jie’s disappearance.
Over the course of eight weeks, over 39,000 man-hours were exhausted in the search for Jie.
“Hundreds of officers got involved with this investigation, and we ended up on a dead-end street,” Dias recalled.
There was one person of interest in Jie’s case: a man who was reportedly mentally ill and had a run-in with another young girl at the same 7-Eleven. Dias detailed how the man told investigators, “I’ll show you where she is,” and “I’ll show you where she’s buried,” on various occasions.
“But his conversations with us led us to conduct an extremely extensive search of the Nuuanu Stream area, utilizing our SWAT team and the dogs we had with the department at the time. And we came up with nothing,” Dias explained.
A different tip alleged that Jie had gotten into a vehicle, a 1950s Chevrolet sedan. Authorities used this clue to run a computer check, compiling a list of all registered Chevrolets between 1953 and 1959.
Then, the police physically checked every single Chevrolet on the list. This proved to be a dead end, too, as no evidence was found.
Over the years, the HPD Homicide Unit has looked into composite sketches of a man who might’ve been driving the Chevrolet, as well as leads pertaining to sightings. Nonetheless, Jie’s case remains unsolved.
“In cold cases, the trail does get stale over time. But one thing we’ve learned in cold cases is that relationships change,” stated retired Honolulu Police Homicide Detective Phil Camero in 2014.
Some have suggested that perhaps Jie had been kidnapped by an individual from China. Families in China were only allowed to have one child back then.
Jie’s parents already had one daughter, so they were forced to keep Jie, as well as her younger sister, hidden until they came to the United States.
Still, what exactly happened to Jie is a mystery. Age progression photos of Jie have been created by the Missing Child Center of Hawaii, showing what she might’ve looked like at age 27 as well as at age 38.
Her mother, Ly, became a U.S. citizen in 1992 and speaks English. However, she prefers to speak her native language and uses a translator for longer conversations.
“The reality of seeing a photo of what her daughter might look like, she cried for days,” the translator said.
Following the twentieth anniversary of Jie’s disappearance, Ly publicly spoke about her daughter’s case for the first time in 2008. She remembers her daughter as a bright young girl who was full of life.
“Her pain is as sharp today as it was 20 years ago,” Ly’s translator stated.
“She sits by the phone every night. The phone number is still the same as it was 20 years ago.”
Most recently, in 2018, Dias expressed his stance on Jie’s case, saying he is “among the group of people” who believe foul play was involved.
“Now, that being said, I would pray that I’m wrong, that nothing happened to her, and somehow, somewhere, she’s alive. And somewhere, somehow, she will come forward if she is alive.”
That year, Ly’s attorney, Wilson Loo, shared how she continues holding onto hope, too.
“Although it has been 30 years, she still thinks of Jie Zhao every single day and still has hopes for information leading to her recovery. Without fail,” Loo noted.
At the time, Jie was four foot eleven, weighed 75 pounds, and had brown eyes and black hair. She would be 49 years old today.
Anyone with information regarding her case is urged to contact the Missing Child Center Hawaii at (808) 586-1449 or Crimestoppers at (808) 955-8300.
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