Michael Kenneth Cruz
Nearly a week after he disappeared while waiting for a ride in Pasay City, 23-year-old Michael Kenneth Cruz has yet to surface.
“We are not giving up and we know we will soon find him,” KC Rivera, Cruz’s older sister, who was at a bus terminal in Cubao, Quezon City, hoping to spot her sibling, when the Inquirer talked to her on Tuesday.
Cruz, a fresh graduate of chemical engineering from the University of the Philippines in Los Baños, disappeared on March 16. He was then on his way to Batangas to report for his first day on the job at Universal Robina Corp.
His family has since been going to bus terminals, hotels and police stations in Metro Manila to search for him.
According to Cruz’s girlfriend, Andrea Baule, he sent his last text message to her at 4:37 a.m. on March 16 after he arrived at a van terminal in Pasay where he was to get a ride bound for Batangas.
“I’m here on Taft. Still waiting for passengers. I’ll just walk around,” the message read.
Rivera received a similar text message at 4:47 a.m., with Cruz asking her to let their mother know of his whereabouts since he had no more mobile load.
Baule said a closed circuit television camera showed Cruz walking from their house in Pasig City at 4 a.m. on his way to Pasay. “That’s him! That’s him! I know that’s him because he is my son,” said Cruz’s mother, Dolores, when she viewed the footage showing a man in a gray shirt with a black backpack.
Dayo Andulan, the dispatcher at the van terminal on March 16, said he did not see a man resembling Cruz that day.
A review of the footage taken by another CCTV camera in front of a nearby bus terminal also offering trips to Batangas did not show Cruz in the area between 3:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., according to Recto Calipayan, a Barangay 146 official.
Cruz’s mother appealed for help from the public. “Please help me. I don’t know where my son is. I know God will help us,” Dolores said.