Westland mother prepares for missing child's 50th birthday
Susan Vela
The holidays are just around the corner and Kathleen Wilson is preparing to release more balloons into the sky for her daughter, Christina.
She started the tradition some years ago to say she loves and misses the child who sat on her bed the morning of Feb. 11, 2013, just as she typically did.
This time, "Chris" kept taking her shoes off and putting them on before finally going for a walk.
Balog, then 43, never returned.
"That was it," said Wilson, sitting in her Westland living room. "No purse. No phone. She didn't take anything with her. She walked around the corner there. She headed that way."
Wilson motioned toward Malvern Street, which runs along the Rouge River.
Wilson, 76, still remembers giving her daughter about an hour before heading into Hines Park to find her. She called police and checked hospitals. As the hours stretched into days, Wilson put up flyers.
She coped with her cognitively-impaired grandson missing his mother. They both gave DNA samples.
Wilson dealt with police who seemed to be accusing her of playing some role in her daughter's disappearance. She grew wary.
"Have you ever watched 'Criminal Minds,' (a TV show about an elite FBI unit)?" Wilson asked. "It was like they were profiling me. I never laid a hand on her … ever. Every time they called me, I was a nervous wreck. I was like skin and bone. That was tough. That was really tough."
Christina Balog remains one of about 300 missing metro Detroit persons identified in a National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) database.
Westland Police Chief Jeff Jedrusik said Balog is treated as a missing person, which means her case is usually reviewed every six months. Every spring, he said, officers scour Hines Park looking specifically for some trace of her.
"Christina Balog was just a unique case where she walked away from her house and didn't really give any direction to her family where she was going. "We've searched the woods like crazy. We just haven't been able to locate her."
Wilson said an officer stopped by her home over the summer to say volunteers were searching for missing people in the park.
At this point, she would prefer her daughter dead than getting tortured and raped somewhere.
"If somebody took her, they're not going to take care of her with no money for all this time," she explained. "That's how I feel."
But she still looks for clues when traveling along nearby streets. She forges on despite the lack of closure.
"When Chris disappeared, I had to go on with my life for Cody," she said. "He's a really good person. He's a lot like Chris."
She finally gave away some of her daughter's belongings earlier this year.
"I kept hoping she'd come back," Wilson said.
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Forced to let go
There are the balloons to consider. Wilson releases them for Christmas, birthdays and other occasions for both her deceased husband and their missing daughter. Cody is her companion.
"We say something, and let the balloons go up," she said. "It makes me feel good to do something like that."
Christina Balog married a man her parents considered domineering. They divorced, and she returned to her parents' home.
She suffered from bipolar disorder. For those last few years, she never lost the agitation that came along when her father, Robert Wilson, died from cancer.
"The man, even when he was sick, always had a smile," Wilson said. "He'd give you the shirt off his back. That's the way Chris was. She was a lot like her father. It really hurt her bad when he died, even though we knew it was coming."
Because of kidney issues, her daughter could no longer take medications that had helped her in the past. Wilson remembered Chris growing afraid to take showers and seeking behavioral care.
Days after being released from a facility, Wilson said her daughter sat at the end of her bed.
She asked questions about their plans for the day.
"She kept it up and kept it up," Wilson said. "I was a wreck."
Christina Balog said someone was coming to get her.
"I said, 'Nobody is coming to get you.' She said, 'Yep, there's a guy right there with a suitcase.' I said, 'He lives next door. Nobody is coming to get you.'
"She put her shoe on. 'I'm going for a walk. I said, 'Ok.' Then she took her shoes off. She must have done that about five times. She finally said, 'Well, I'm going for a walk.'"
Cody was at school when his mother disappeared.
Wilson now has custody of the young man, 22.
"He hopes she comes home," Wilson said. "He still thinks she's going to come home."
Cody did not want to comment for this story. Speaking gruffly, he said he doesn't have much to say and doesn't remember a lot about his mother.
"All I know is I miss her," he said. "I just know that she's a good person."
Their planned balloon date is Dec. 16, Balog's 50th birthday.
"It's going to be a sad one," Wilson said. "It's not as though I don't think about her every day, because we do. But it is what it is until we get closure.
"After seven years and nothing… Cody thinks she's going to come back but I don't think so. If I found her on my porch, I'd be excited.
"Thank God, I've got Cody."
Contact Susan Vela at svela@hometownlife.com or 248-303-8432. Follow her on Twitter @susanvela.
Metro Detroit cold cases
This is suburban Detroit, and area police agencies have a few cold cases to investigate.
Cases get colder and tougher to solve as time passes without significant clues. And there's the turmoil from bodies missing, evidence lacking and crime scenes still to be found.
Crime statisticians warn of a cold case crisis. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the nation has about 250,000 unsolved murders, and the number rises by several thousand each year.
This is part of a series of stories looking at some of the cold cases in metro Detroit.
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