Chapter 5: Lost Without a Trace

By 2009, it felt like the search for me had slowed down.

My family still loved me, but life kept moving around me while I was somewhere lost in the streets of Oakland… drifting from hotel rooms, random couches, and places that never felt safe. Sometimes I stayed with friends. Sometimes I stayed wherever I could. I was young, reckless, angry, and searching for love in all the wrong places.

But yea 2009 would change me forever.

I was kidnapped by five men.

Beaten.

Raped.

Choked until I blacked out.

Hit with a belt until my body gave out.

They left me behind the old school district near East 12th and 2nd Ave like I was nothing. Like my life didn’t matter.

When I finally woke up, the sky was still dark. My body felt cold and heavy. I remember a Hispanic man getting off work standing over me, begging me to call the police. I was terrified. My eyes were swollen black with broken blood vessels. My clothes were ripped apart. My hair was torn out. I could barely see straight.

The people I thought were protecting me had set me up.

The man I thought had my back left me there to die.

He even sent two girls to come collect money I didn’t have.

One of those girls, Shayla, looked at me differently though. Maybe she saw how broken I was. Maybe she saw somebody’s daughter underneath all the damage. Before leaving, she gave me the shirt off her back because I was nearly naked.

That small act of kindness stayed with me.

I walked through Oakland in heels, bruised and bleeding, trying to make it downtown. It had to be around two or three in the morning. Back then, downtown Oakland never really slept. Buses still moved. Police drove by. Ambulances echoed through the streets. People wandered outside like ghosts surviving another night.

I remember walking into a store when the light finally hit my face.

That’s when somebody recognized me.

He looked hard for a second before yelling,

“Cocoa?! That’s you?”

I just stared at him, too weak to answer.

He started screaming for somebody to call the police… or an ambulance… anything. And just like that, I was rushed to the hospital—hurt, confused, disconnected from myself.

The police came in asking questions, but I was still in shock. I couldn’t process anything they were saying. I didn’t want to relive it. I didn’t even want to speak.

I just wanted my mom.

They performed a rape kit and eventually sent me home.

I remember my mother looking at me with sadness in her eyes while gently putting witch hazel on my face and eyes. My jaw was damaged so badly I could barely chew. When I finally looked at myself in the mirror, I broke down crying.

I didn’t even feel pain anymore.

I felt numb.

Numb to the streets.

Numb to people.

Numb to myself.

My thoughts kept replaying over and over in my head like a movie I couldn’t shut off. Every detail. Every scream. Every mistake. I carried it silently because I didn’t know how to explain that kind of pain to anyone.

And truthfully… my mother wasn’t easy to talk to either.

I think she carried her own unspoken trauma. Her own wounds. Her own survival story. We were two broken people living under the same roof trying to survive life without ever really knowing how to heal each other.

Three months later, my bruises started fading, but mentally I was nowhere near healed.

The outside of me looked better, but inside I was still carrying fear, anger, confusion, and shame. I stopped trusting people completely. Every smile looked fake. Every promise sounded dangerous. I questioned everybody around me because the people I once trusted were the same people who helped destroy me.

I had to find myself all over again.

Not the innocent girl I used to be before the streets.

Not the broken version laying in that hospital bed either.

But a harder version of me… a colder version that learned how to survive no matter what.

Instead of slowing down, the trauma pushed me deeper into the streets. Looking back now, I realize I was trying to outrun the pain. I stayed busy because being alone with my thoughts felt worse than anything. Working became my distraction. My survival mode. My addiction.

No matter what happened to me, I couldn’t stay away from the fast money, the nightlife, the hustle, or the feeling of chasing a goal. In my mind, I had already survived the worst thing possible, so fear no longer controlled me the same way. If anything, the trauma made me move harder, think faster, and build thicker walls around myself.

But behind all that toughness was still a young girl silently bleeding inside.

I smiled through conversations.

I laughed around people.

I played strong.

But deep down, I was still trying to piece myself back together after being left for dead.