While she cuffed him, the biker looked at the cop’s nameplate. It was his daughter’s name.
Officer Sarah Chen had pulled me over on Highway 49 because my taillight was broken. But when she walked up and I saw her face, I couldn’t breathe.
She had my mother’s eyes, my nose, and the same crescent moon-shaped birthmark below her left ear.
The birthmark I used to kiss her goodnight when she was two years old, before her mother whisked her away and never came back.
“License and registration,” she stated in a businesslike, chilly tone.
I shook my hands as I gave them to them. Robert “Ghost” McAllister.
She didn’t know the name; Amy probably altered it. But I knew everything about her.
The way she stood with her weight on her left leg. The little scar above her eyebrow from when she fell off her trike. How she pushed her hair behind her ear while she was focused.
“Mr. I’m going to need you to get off the bike, McAllister.
She didn’t realize she was taking her dad into custody. The father who had been looking for thirty-one years.
Let me go back a bit so you can grasp what this occasion means.
Sarah, whose full name was Sarah Elizabeth McAllister, went missing on March 15, 1993.
Amy’s mother and I had been divorced for six months. We were making it work, and I saw him every weekend.
Then Amy met a new person. Richard Chen, a banker, promised her the security that I claimed I could never give her.
I went to get Sarah for our weekend one day, but they were gone. There was no one in the flat. No address to send it to. Nothing.
I did everything the right way. Made reports to the police. I paid private detectives with money I didn’t have.
The courts declared Amy had broken the rules of custody, but they couldn’t find her. She had planned it out perfectly: new names, cash transactions, and no digital trail.
This was before it was tougher to hide things online.
I looked for my daughter for thirty-one years. the person in the crowd. Every female with black hair. Every teen could be her. Every young woman who had my mom’s eyes.
My brothers from the Sacred Riders MC helped me look. We knew people in every state.
We glanced every time we rode. I carried her newborn picture in my vest pocket for every charity run, rally, and long haul.
The picture had worn soft from being touched for thirty-one years to make sure it was still there.
I didn’t get married again. Never had any other kids. How could I?
My kid was out there someplace, and she might have thought I had left her. Not even thinking about me.
“Mr. McAllister?” Officer Chen’s voice brought me back. “I told you to get off the bike.”
“I apologize,” I said. “I just—you look like someone I know.”
She got tense and moved her hand to her gun. “Sir, get off the bike.” “Now.”
I got off, and my knees, which are sixty-eight years old, hurt. She was now thirty-three. A police officer.
Amy had always despised that I rode with a club because she thought it was hazardous. I thought it was funny that our daughter became a police officer.
“I smell booze,” she remarked.
“I haven’t had a drink.”
“I’m going to need you to take a field sobriety test.”
I knew she didn’t truly smell like booze. I had been clean for fifteen years. But something in the way I reacted scared her and made her doubt me.
I didn’t blame her. I probably looked like every crazy old biker she had ever met, with my looking too hard, shaking hands, and weird behavior.
I looked at her hands while she gave me the tests. Her fingers were lengthy like my mother’s. Mom used to nickname them “piano player fingers,” but none of us ever learned how to play.
A little tattoo was showing on her right hand under her sleeve. Characters from China. Probably because of her adoptive father’s influence.
“Mr. McAllister, I’m arresting you on suspicion of driving under the influence.”
“I haven’t been drinking,” I said again. “Try me.” “Breathalyzer, blood, whatever you want.”
“You’ll get all of that at the station.”
When she cuffed me, I could smell her vanilla perfume and something more, something that made my chest hurt.
The infant shampoo is by Johnson. She still used the same kind of shampoo. Amy said it was the only one that didn’t make Sarah cry when she was a newborn.
I said quietly, “My daughter used that shampoo.”
She stopped. “Excuse me?”
“Johnson’s. The bottle that is yellow. My daughter really liked it.
“Stop talking, sir.”
But I couldn’t. There was a break in thirty-one years of stillness. “She had a birthmark that was exactly like yours.” Just below her left ear.
Officer Chen’s hand moved to her ear without thinking, then stopped. Her eyes got smaller. “How long have you been looking at me?”
“I haven’t been. I promise. I just—how could I explain? ” You look like someone I lost.”
She pulled me harder toward her cruiser. “Put it away for later.”
The trip to the station was painful. For twenty minutes, I stared at the back of my daughter’s head and saw Amy’s stubborn cowlick that no amount of gel could tame.
She kept looking in the mirror, possibly to see if someone was following her.
She handed me over to another officer at the station to be processed.
But I spotted her looking from across the room as they took my fingerprints, my picture, and my record.
Clean, except for a few small things from the 1990s, such as bar fights that happened during the angry years after Sarah went missing.
The breathalyzer said 0.00. The test on the blood would too. Officer Chen didn’t like the results.
When she came back, I remarked, “I told you I was sober.”
“Why did you act so weird?”
“Can I show you something?” It’s in my vest. A picture.”
She thought about it for a moment, then nodded to the desk sergeant, who gave her my things.
She looked through the pockets of my vest and found a knife, some cash, and some challenge coins from my time in the Marines. Then she discovered it. The picture felt soft like fabric.
Her face turned white.
Sarah, who was two years old, was sitting on my Harley, wearing my big vest, and giggling at the camera.
Amy had it for two weeks before they went missing. The last time we all had a lovely day together, even though we were divorced.
“Where did you find this?”” Her voice was sharp and professional, but there was something else there. Are you scared? Acknowledgment?
“That’s my girl.” Sarah Elizabeth McAllister. It was 3 AM on September 3, 1990. Two ounces and eight pounds.
For three months, she suffered colic and only stopped sobbing when I rode her around the neighborhood on my bike. “Vroom” was her first word.
Officer Chen looked at the picture, then at me, and then back at the picture. I witnessed the instant she noticed how similar they were. The same chin and nose that won’t budge.
She said softly, “My name is Sarah Chen.” “I was adopted when I was three.”
“Adopted?”
“My adoptive parents told me that my real parents died in a motorcycle accident.” That’s what I said when I was frightened of bikes.
The room turned. Amy didn’t just take her. In Sarah’s opinion, she had killed us. She killed us so she wouldn’t look for us.
I said, “Your mother’s name was Amy.”
“Amy Patricia Williams before she married me.” She has a scar on her left hand from an accident in the kitchen. Strawberries made her sick. “She sang Fleetwood Mac in the shower.”
Sarah’s hand was shaking now. “My adoptive mother… her sister Amy… she died when I was five.” “Car crash.”
“No.” The word came out wrong. “No, she took you.” The 15th of March, 1993. “I’ve been looking—”
“Stop.” Sarah stepped back. “This isn’t—My parents are Linda and Richard Chen. They took care of me. They—
I said, “Call them.” “Talk to them about Amy.” Find out if she was actually Linda’s sister. Ask them why they don’t have any images of you before you were three.
“You’re lying.”
“Test of DNA. I’ll pay for it. Hurry it up. “Please.”
This tough cop had put me in handcuffs an hour ago, and now she was crying.
“My parents told me that my real parents were heroin addicts. Bikers who died because they were foolish.
“I’ve been clean for fifteen years.” Yes, I drank before that. But never drugs. No way. And I never stopped searching for you. “Not one day in thirty-one years.”
She got up and departed. For three hours, I sat there waiting for her to come back with a phone in her hand and a face that was ruined.
“They said it,” she said in a low voice.
“My parents. Parents who adopt. No matter what they are. Linda’s sister was Amy.
She came with me when I was two and told my dad he was dangerous and that we needed new names.
They helped her keep us safe. After Amy perished in the automobile accident, they just kept me. “Kept the lie.”
“Sarah—”
“They said you were part of a motorcycle gang.” That you were violent.”
“I’m a member of the Sacred Riders.” We collect money for the children of veterans.
I gave every penny I could spare after looking for you to kids who lost parents in the military. I assumed that if I helped enough kids, karma would bring you back.
This stranger, who was my daughter, sat down across from me. “The mark over my eyebrow?”
“Tricycle. You were trying to ride your bike as I do when I pop a wheelie. Needed three stitches.
You were quite brave and didn’t weep. You got a Tweety Bird sticker from the nurse.
She whispered softly, “I still have it.” “In my baby book.” The one thing that didn’t make sense was a Tweety Bird sticker from a hospital I had never heard of.
“Mercy General in Sacramento.” It shut down in 1995.
“Why didn’t you… why didn’t anyone find us?”
“Your mom was wise. Richard had money and friends. They knew how to get away.
There was no trail at all after Amy died. You were merely Sarah Chen, the adoptive daughter of kind folks.
She took out her phone and showed me a picture. Two kids, both young. “These are my boys.” Your… your grandsons. Tyler is six years old. Four-year-old Brandon.
They were like me. They both had the McAllister chin and the same crooked smile that I saw in the mirror every morning.
“They love motorcycles,” she remarked, laughing through her tears.
“Make my husband go crazy.” Always wanting to see the bikes when we pass people on bikes. I never allowed them. “They said they were dangerous.”
“Riding them is the only thing that makes them dangerous.”
She said, “I became a cop.” “I became a cop so I could find bikers who were dangerous.”
The people who left their kids behind. The ones my parents said you were.
“Did you find any?”
“Some.” But I saw bikers aiding drivers who had broken down more often. Bikers are collecting money for kids with cancer. Bikers are helping people who have been abused. “It didn’t fit with what I had heard.”
“Sarah—” I stretched across the table and stopped. “Can I… can I touch your hand? Just to see whether you’re real?”
She reached out slowly. Our hands touched—mine were worn and scarred from years of searching, and hers were strong and steady. She gasped when our skin met.
“I remember,” she said softly. “Oh God, I remember.” You used to write letters on my hand before bed. The letters of the alphabet. You said it would make me smart.
“You learned your letters before you could walk well.”
“There was a song.” Something about wheels?
“Wheels on the Bike.” I rewrote the words to the song about the bus. You had me sing it every single night.
She was crying now, this tough detective who was my daughter. “The calls. There were calls when I was a kid. Linda would hang up. Say they were people that called to sell things.
“I never gave up.” I kept trying even when the numbers changed.
“Thirty-one years?”
“Thirty-one years, two months, and sixteen days.”
“You counted?”
“All of them.”
The sergeant at the desk knocked. “Chen, is everything okay in there?”
Sarah cleaned her face. “Tom, I need a minute.”
“The prints on the guy came back clean.” Just some old bar crap. Are you going to press charges? “
She glanced at me and said, “No. No fees. ‘Misunderstanding.'”
We sat in silence for a while after he left.
She said, “I don’t know how to do this.” “You are a stranger, but you are not. You are my father, yet Richard brought me up. “I am a cop, and you are a biker.”
“We’re going slow,” I said. “First, coffee. Maybe at lunch. You can bring your boys if you want to. Or not. It’s up to you. You can choose anything.
“My husband is going to go crazy.”
“He’s welcome to come too.” I’ll answer any inquiries you have.
“My parents, the Chens, are nice people. They just…
“They loved you. They took care of you. I’m thankful for it, even though they kept you away from me. You turned out great. That’s what’s important.
She got up and helped me get up. “Your bike is still on Highway 49.”
“My brothers will get it.”
“Brothers?”
“The Holy Riders.” They’ve been looking for you as well. Every state, every run. Uncle Bear, Uncle Whiskey, and Uncle Tango never gave up either.
“Do I have uncles?”
“Twenty-seven of them.” They’ve been stockpiling birthday gifts for thirty years. Whiskey has an entire storage unit filled with birthday gifts. Kept adding, “When we find you, you’ll have thirty-one birthdays at once.”
She laughed, just as she did when she was a baby. “That’s crazy.”
“That’s family.”
She led me out of the station. She turned to me in the parking lot, where the bright fluorescent lights were.
“The DNA test.” Let’s get it done. “Just to be sure.”
I said, “I’m already sure.” “But we’ll do it.”
“How can you be sure?”
“You bite your bottom lip when you think, much like my mom. Like me, you put your weight on your left leg. You still use Johnson’s baby shampoo even though you’re 33 years old. And you hummed when you were arresting me. The same song you hummed as a baby when you were trying to focus.
“What song?”
“Rhiannon” by Fleetwood Mac. The song your mom likes the most.
At that point, she lost it totally. I extended my arms, and my daughter—my lost daughter, my found daughter, and the cop who had arrested me—fell into them.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m sorry I didn’t look for you.”
“You were just a baby.” You were a youngster who thought we were dead back then. “Don’t be sorry.”
“I hated you.” Hated someone who wasn’t real.
“Now you know the truth.”
“Dad?” “Dad, I want my kids to meet you,” she said, and that one word, the one I had been waiting thirty-one years to hear, almost killed me.
“I’d like that.”
“They’ll love your bike.”
“I’ll teach them about bikes.” In the correct way. “Safe way.”
“Tyler’s been asking for a leather jacket.”
I thought that was funny. “I know a guy.”
She pulled back and looked at me. “You look just like your picture,” they said. The one that the Chens owned. From before.”
“Which picture?”
She took out her phone and showed me. It was a picture of me as a Marine from 1973. Young, clean-shaven, and dressed up.
“Amy kept that?”
The Chens found it in her stuff. That was the only photo she had of you. I used to look at it and wonder what kind of person my father was.
“Now you know.” A motorcyclist who was always hunting for his young girl.
“Found her, though.”
“You found me, in a way. They even took me into custody.
“Best arrest I ever made.”
That was six months ago. The DNA test proved what we already knew. Sarah Chen was my daughter, and Sarah Elizabeth McAllister was her name.
It hasn’t been easy to put everything together. At first, the Chens were angry and thought I had betrayed them.
But we got through it. They are still her parents. They provided her a decent life, a good education, and good morals. Thank you.
Mark, Sarah’s husband, didn’t believe her at first, but then he met the Sacred Riders. It’s hard to be terrified of twenty-seven motorcyclists who cry when they see your wife and have been carrying her photo about for thirty years.
Bear sent her thirty-one birthday cards, one for each year she missed. Whiskey truly did have a storage unit full of plush animals, dolls, bikes, and other things that a girl her age would have loved.
We gave away most of it, but Sarah retained certain things.
My grandchildren Tyler and Brandon are natural riders. Tyler can already tell what kind of bike it is just by the sound it makes.
We declared Brandon an honorary member, so he wears his little Sacred Riders vest everywhere.
Sarah is still worried, but she lets them sit on my bike and allows me to teach them about engines, honor, and brotherhood.
Sarah accomplished something last month that repaired thirty-one years of pain. She came to our church (which is our weekly meeting) in uniform.
“I have to say something,” she said.
Twenty-seven bikers stopped talking.
“You looked for me when no one else would have.” You held the faith even when it seemed ridiculous. You’re the uncles I never knew I had and the relatives I was never allowed to have.
I was taught to be afraid of you and to arrest individuals like you. But you’re a hero. The people I look up to. “Thanks for never giving up.”
Then she took off her back and pulled out a leather vest. A supporter vest, not a full cut. “I know I can’t join. But maybe…
Bear said, “You were born a member.” “You are the daughter of Ghost.” That means you’re a member of the Sacred Riders royal family.
She wears it sometimes while she’s not working. My daughter is a cop and wears a leather vest. She is in two worlds that shouldn’t meet but do.
The Chens are now coming to certain family gatherings. It’s hard, but we’re doing our best.
They are nice people who did something awful for what they thought were good motives. Forgiveness is tougher than being angry, but it helps more.
Amy passed away believing she had protected Sarah from me. The day I held our daughter again, I forgave her. We don’t need to be angry with the dead; we need to embrace the living.
Sarah rides her department Harley, and I ride my old Road King with her sometimes.
Two generations, two worlds, and one blood. We don’t talk a lot while we’re riding. No need to. The thirty-one years of stillness spoke it all.
She’s launching a program where cops and motorcyclists work together to find missing kids. Using both viewpoints and both networks.
She insists it’s professional, but I know it’s not. She wants to spare other fathers thirty-one years of looking. Other daughters who have been lied to for thirty-one years.
She tells the people she talks to, “I arrested my father.” “Best mistake I ever made.”
I have the documentation for the arrest framed in my apartment. Officer S. Chen takes Robert McAllister into custody on suspicion of drunk driving.
The paper that put an end to thirty-one years of looking. The police stopped my daughter and brought her home.
The universe can be funny at times. A broken taillight can sometimes help heal a shattered heart. Being arrested by your daughter is often the only way to be free.
And occasionally, just sometimes, the people who are lost are found in the most unlikely circumstances.
Last week, Tyler asked me, “Grandpa, why do they call you Ghost?”
“Because I was haunting someone for thirty-one years who didn’t know I was there.”
“But ghosts aren’t real.”
I said “no” while glancing at Sarah as she helped Brandon with his toy motorcycle. “But coming back to life is.”
She heard me, glanced up, and smiled. It was the smile of my mother, my smile, and her boys. The smile I’d been looking for in every crowd for 30 years.
I found you, sweetie. I finally discovered you.
Even if you had to take me into custody.