TIFU by losing a drunk girl in a parking garage for over 3 hours and convincing hundreds of people she was kidnapped

This happened approximately 3 months ago. I attend a large University and we happen to host a completely student-run dance competition every year for approximately 16 or so teams from across the country. Each team is usually assigned 3-4 Students from my school to serve as a “liaison” throughout competition weekend - ie we basically get anything at all they need and serve as their eyes and ears. Because they’re not from my school, at least one liaison has to be with them at all times just out of liability and safety issues.

Gotta use the bathroom? Cool, I’ll come with. Need to go to CVS? I’m your ride. Forgot something in your car? Looks like I’m coming with you. Craving McDonalds at 4 am? I’m your b****

2 hours into practice time, the team realizes they left their dance props in the parking garage which happens to be about a 4-5 minute walk from the recreation center we were practicing in. No big deal - they send one of the girls, we'll call her Emma, to grab the props from the car. I'm sent along with her just to make sure she doesn’t get lost. It’s around 10 PM at this point.

Now, I have no idea what this car looks like or where it is parked but I distantly remember the captain saying he parked the car somewhere on the first floor and that its a black SUV. Cool - Emma obviously knows where it is so I let her take the lead and don't think much of it again. BIG. MISTAKE.

We’re walking to the garage and I don’t notice anything wrong with her. Sure, she seems kind of aloof and ditsy but she’s not slurring her speech and they sent her with me so obviously she must be okay. We were even having a pretty good conversation and she was walking okay too. Perhaps she just doesn't like making eye contact or is shy.

WRONG. I find out later from some of Emma's teammates that she was absolutely trashed at the time that we left - like "has been doing shots since 4 PM" trashed. She just happens to be one of those drunks who seems coherent and then ends up on the floor a few minutes later.

So we get to the garage and I asked her if she knew where the car was - she says yes, so we continue walking around. Now mind you, this parking garage is MASSIVE. It has 6 levels, including the basement, and each half of the floor spirals upwards in two different directions with a shared middle area. To elaborate, this garage has almost 1000 parking spaces.

Anywho, I remember passing a black SUV on the first floor near the entrance and when I asked Emma about it, she said that that wasn't their car. Okay, I'll take her word for it, who am I to say otherwise (?) and we continue walking upwards. After like 10 minutes of looking and not finding the car, we decide on the 4th floor to split up and take either the left or right-hand side of each floor. There are only 2 floors left and if we happen to find the car on our side of the garage, we'll just message the other person to let them know to come to us. We were only supposed to be separated for maybe 5 minutes tops.

So, I start walking on my half and I remember seeing Emma to a certain point, but by the time I get to the rooftop, Emma isn't there on the other side. I message her on Groupme (I wasn't given her number) to let her know that there weren't any Black SUV's on my side and to ask if she'd found it. No response. I wait another 5 minutes. No response again.

Perhaps I have a poor connection and my messages aren't delivering? Nope, they've delivered - my signal is absolutely fine.
Perhaps she's just slow or something, I'll give her a couple more minutes. 3 more minutes go by and not only is there no sign of Emma but she also hasn't read any of my Groupme messages.

I'm freaked out at this point. It is now probably around 10:30 PM and I haven't heard or seen her in over 15 minutes. It's cold, pitch black outside, I am apparently alone in this gigantic parking garage in the middle of the night, my phone is at 10% because I somehow always forget to charge that thing, and Emma is nowhere to be found. Also, I've watched wayyyyyy too many Lifetime movies and I know that people are always murdered or kidnapped in Parking Garages - but today ain't' gonna be the day for me or Emma to die.

I start screaming Emma's name at the top of my lungs - no response. I walk all the way down, passing both sides of each floor and continuing to yell for Emma. Still no response. I check the elevators to see if perhaps she got stuck in - nope, no one is there. I go up and down the stairs that are in the garage to see if maybe she took the stairs and got hurt - nope. No one is there.
I get to the bottom of the garage and I am cold, I am scared, and my calves are on absolute fire. I can't find this girl anywhere. Where the hell could she have gone?

I assume that maybe her phone died and she did the normal thing and decided to wait near the entrance - NOPE. No one is there. I walk around the perimeter of the garage to see if maybe she's somewhere there or was thrown off the ledge and is in the grass somewhere - nope, no Emma, and no bodies. It is now almost 11 PM.

I am freaking out. I text my co-liaisons (let's call them Sarah and Alex) and the conversation goes something like this:
- ME: "So..I lost Emma?"

- SARAH: "What?"

- ME: "I mean, we split up to look for the car but she hasn't responded to my Groupme
      messages"

- SARAH: "Bruh, she has to be there lmao. Heres her number ___, text her there, maybe
         she has poor WIFI connection"

So I message Emma again, this time via text, and cross my fingers. It has now been over 45 minutes since I've seen Emma and not only is she not in the parking garage or back in the practice space, but her friends haven't heard from her since we left for the garage together. Where the hell could she have gone? I, being the paranoid dummy I am, start walking up to each car that's left in this hell hole and peer in through the windows to see if her body could be in there - don't ask me why man, I can't explain the way I am or how my thought processes work but she's not there. How did I manage to lose this chick in 5 minutes?

Eventually, Sarah brings 4 of the other team members to keep me company and help search. Right off the bat, one of the girls goes: "Hey, did Emma take the supplies and leave?"

-ME: "No...we never found the car"

- Girl: "What do you mean? The car is right in front of us, look. The license plate is from our state too and."

I, at this point, am SHOOK. Its the same black SUV near the entrance that I'd pointed out to Emma earlier that night to which she'd responded it wasn't theirs. We go up to the car and all the props are in the trunk - Emma hasn't touched them. Why did she say it wasn't her car??? I asked!! How did she miss her own car? Was she lying? Did she forget? Why didn't she test her keys?? I have many questions

That's where the being "absolutely smashed" part kicks in. This chick had absolutely no idea what was going on. And I just let this drunk girl split up with me for 5 minutes to look for a stupid car and now she's no where to be found! I'm hysterical at this point. The only thing I can think about is that someone in the 5 minutes we were separated kidnapped her and drove off and now I'm going to be accused of murder or something. It's my senior year, this cannot be the way my college experience ends.

The 6 of us again search each floor and yell out for Emma. By 11:30 PM, we come across some of the directors of the dance program and explain the situation to them. They're basically like "WTF? but ok" and agree to drive up and down the parking garage and around the area to look for her. They can't find any signs of her either.

We then decide its time to call the campus police around 12 AM. I'm sobbing at this point and the conversation with the cop goes like this:

- COP: "And how old would you say she is?"

- ME: "She's 23 and she looks like ___"

- COP: "And do you have reason to believe she would harm herself?"

- ME: "I mean, IDK? I met this check like 2 hours ago, how am I supposed to know that? I'm going to assume no?"

- COP: "Well ma'am, since she's 23, not from our school, and not at risk of harming herself, there isn't anything we can do. She's allowed to turn her phone off and not respond for a while. If you don't hear from her in another 24 hours, call us again."

And he hangs up. O.K. What??

So then we get 3 more team members to help us search. We try calling her and the calls don't even go voicemail, they just don't go through at all. Maybe her phone is dead or maybe she is, who knows?

I try to text her again and the FREAKIEST THING happens. The phone gives me an "Error Invalid Number. Please re-send using a valid 10 digit mobile number" message. WTF? Other people try texting her and the same thing happens. I think "wow, she must have been kidnapped by some smartass people because now her number isn't working either?"
This, as you can probably tell, makes me even more hysterical. Her snapchat location hasn't updated since she left for the garage with me at 10.

Now, we are in full pursuit. We ask the recreation center to announce her name and check for her. We ask all 16 dance teams plus the hundreds of liaisons plus anyone in the building to look for her in the recreation center and on campus. These people are running in each bathroom, going up to each floor, doing whatever they can to find Emma. There was also an afterparty going on in celebration of the competition at a bar a 10-minute drive away and we thought perhaps she went there on her own and forgot to inform us. So now, the directors are calling the bar and the exec board members that are there to make an announcement to look for Emma.

We continue searching in another parking garage that is a 2 minute walk away to see if perhaps she left and then went into there, confused - idk man. Go up and down each floor, check the elevators, check the ledges, check the stairs, and come back down. Still no sign of her. Legs - still on fire. I never work out so the next day, you can guess that I was a sore MOFO.

At this point, it is now 1 AM - almost 3 hours since I've seen Emma. We decide to just bite the bullet and call 911 and report a missing person. I am sobbing and tell the lady on the other line the whole story about how she has been missing for 3 hours and not responding to her texts. Before the dispatcher can respond, my coliaison Alex screams that they found Emma!

I apologize profusely and hang up while the dispatcher annoyingly tells me next time NOT to call 911 and rather to call the campus police lmao.

Where did they find her?

A whole 20-25 minute walk away from the recreation center near the dorms on the other side of campus! Apparently 2 of my friends hopped in a car to drive around campus and ran into her and this is how the conversation went:

- FRIENDS: "What happened? Why are you here?"

- EMMA: "I just got lost once I left the garage and forgot that another person was
         with me and I just continued to walk. My phone also died"

- FRIENDS: "Why didn't you stop anyone to ask how to get back to the recreation
            center?"

- EMMA: "I don't know, I just kept walking. I was gonna look for a bench to sleep on till morning when more people were out. But I was only gone for an hour maybe I didn't mean it would cause this much concern"

- FRIENDS: "Emma...you were gone for over 3 hours"

She had no concept of time. I have so many questions. I am concerned for her. I am assuming all the shots have fully kicked in at this point. But she is safe and I stop hysterically crying and thinking of lifetime movie plots. She ended up being a little bit embarrassed about the whole thing later and refused to make eye contact with me but she is all good and okay and I'm sure she can mostly laugh about it now.

I, although still a little traumatized, learned that 5 minutes is a lot of time to lose someone and I will never make this same mistake again. My kids will also probably be on a leash till they're 18.

TL;DR: Split up with a girl to look for a car for five minutes even though we were supposed to be together at all times. Apparently no one knew that she was drunk beyond the point of coherence and her phone died so she walked away and was missing for 3 hours. The cops couldn’t do anything so I set up a wild goose chase and caused probably 300-400 people to think she was kidnapped or murdered. We found her on a bench 25 minutes away.

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