Member-only story

Schoolgirl Vanishes From Hawaii Neighborhood While Selling Fundraiser Tickets Door-to-Door

Cat Leigh
True Crime by Cat Leigh
3 min readNov 19, 2024

Jie Zhao Li disappeared three years after her parents left China, where they had kept her a secret due to the country’s one-child policy.

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

In 1985, Yan Ruan Li and her husband immigrated to Oahu, an island in Hawaii. Due to China’s one-child policy at the time, they had kept two of their three daughters a secret until leaving the country.

The family lived in an apartment on Nuuanu Avenue, and their middle child, 12-year-old Jie Zhao Li, attended the nearby Royal Elementary School.

On the afternoon of February 11, 1988, Jie left home to go door to door and sell Zippy’s chili tickets for a school fundraiser. The goal was to raise enough money for a trip to the Big Island.

Yan gave Jie a wristwatch so she’d be home by 6 PM, but the girl never made it back. She was last seen around 4 PM outside a 7-Eleven convenience store on Nuuanu Avenue and Kuakini Street. Jie was wearing a yellow t-shirt and red, pink, or white shorts.

Jie (left) and Jie with her mother, older sister, and younger sister (right) / NCMEC, Star-Bulletin

Hundreds of officers and over 2,000 volunteers helped search for the missing 12-year-old. The Honolulu…

--

--

No responses yet