 Courtesy of Lisa Stephenson Courtesy of Lisa Stephenson 
 
 By Beth Brogan , BDN Staff • November 9, 2015 1:58 pm 
 
 Updated: November 9, 2015 5:07 pm 
 
 BRUNSWICK, Maine — Lisa Stephenson knew something wasn’t quite right when two young girls walked into the Blue Crab Grill late last month and filled out job applications. The girls had stolen one of their mother’s cars and had driven “straight through Boston, New York, and some of the most scary places they could have been,” the mom of the older girl told the Bangor Daily News. Both seemed too young to be looking for work, they weren’t in school, and neither included home addresses or cellphone numbers on their job applications. A quick search of Facebook when she got home that night confirmed her instincts: A Brunswick woman was frantically searching for her 16-year-old Brunswick daughter, who, along with a 14-year-old Bath girl, had disappeared in the early morning hours of Oct. 25. They posted “Missing” notices on Facebook, and contacted the Bath teen’s family in South Carolina, where she was born and previously lived, thinking the girls might be headed to see a friend there. The teens are now safe at home in Maine (although both are grounded and the older girl is banned from using social media) and Stephenson has been dubbed a hero by the older girl’s mom. Stephenson sent the mom a friend request and shared that she had met the girls and then enlisted the help of her cousins — police deputies in a nearby county — who tracked them down after they were seen panhandling in front of a clothing store on Nov. 3. On the way home, the trio stopped at the Blue Crab Grill to thank Stephenson, who explained to the girls how close they came to real danger. Stephenson worried what could happen to the girls at the two truck stops or no-questions-asked motels only minutes from the restaurant. But her mom, and the rest of the family, spent much of the next few days on Facebook, praising and “friending” the Delaware woman who found their girl. “I don’t feel like a hero,” insists Stephenson.
– A waitress is being called a hero after helping point parents and police to two girls who vanished in Maine last month. Lisa Stephenson was waiting tables at the Blue Crab Grill in Newark, Del., when two young girls came in asking for jobs. "They said they were traveling and their phones and wallets were stolen in New York," she tells the Bangor Daily News. They left job applications noting neither had finished high school, but no address or phone number. "It didn't add up," says Stephenson, 26. “It seemed odd for teen girls not to have cellphones, nowadays,” she tells Yahoo. When Stephenson got home, she searched their names on Facebook and found the girls, 14 and 16, had disappeared in Maine a day earlier on Oct. 25, along with a car belonging to the younger girl's mother, and may have been heading for South Carolina. Stephenson reached out to the older girl's mother and then to local police. The next day, after receiving other concerned calls, authorities found the girls panhandling in front of a strip mall about 100 miles away in Waldorf, Md. An officer took them to a district station where a social worker picked them up. They were reunited with their mothers on Oct. 28. While the younger's girl's mother drove her car back home, the other woman took the girls to the Blue Crab Grill, where they thanked Stephenson in person. On Facebook, the mother praised Stephenson as "a hero—a person who trusted her gut when she saw two young girls all alone and helped." But Stephenson is rejecting the title. “I don’t feel like a hero,” she tells Yahoo. “I just feel like a normal person who needed to speak up and did." (This teen just discovered that he'd been "missing" for 13 years.)