Jimmy Hendrickson’s 1991 Disappearance Still Haunts Tucson Family

TUCSON, AZ — The database for a national clearinghouse for missing and exploited children lists the names of more than 200 Arizona children who have vanished over the past several decades. If they are still alive, many would be adults now, including James “Jimmy” Hendrickson, who was 12 when he was last seen in Tucson 28 years ago.

The rest of Jimmy’s family was vacationing in Mexico for a week in the summer of 1991, but he decided to stay behind with a trusted family friend. He spent the night of July 11 with the family babysitter’s sister, and was last seen playing a video game about 10 p.m. that night.

When Hendrickson family returned home about a week later, the babysitter told them Jimmy was missing. But no one had filed a report with police.

The boy's mother and sister rushed the police department to file a missing persons report, according to media reports. Jimmy, who would have been a sixth-grader at Amphi Middle School that fall, had no history of running away, according to The Charley Project website, which has about 13,000 profiles of missing persons cold cases.

But he was considered "streetwise," and police thought he had left on his own accord.

Fourteen days later, police began investigating the boy’s disappearance, the Arizona Daily Star wrote in a 2015 report on the 24th anniversary of the date Jimmy was last seen. Investigators combed through junkyards, searched the desert around Tucson and asked around the north-side neighborhood where he was last seen, but there was no trace of him.

Police think he left the home in the 700 block of West Paris Promenade about 8 a.m. on June 12 to walk to his home in the 200 block of East Delano Street. Witnesses reported seeing him about 8 that night at a Circle K convenience store in the vicinity of West Grant and North Oracle roads.

But the case went cold, and police suspect foul play.

Tammy Tacho, who was 17 when her younger brother vanished, talked to news station KGUN about the toll Jimmy Hendrickson’s disappearance has taken on her family. The story was broadcast Thursday.

"I thought we were in a nightmare, I thought we were going to wake up from this and Jimmy was going to come home, all this was a nightmare but we couldn't wake up from this because all of it was true,” she said.

In 2016, after her brother had been missing for 25 years, Tacho obtained the 1-inch thick file on the case from the Tucson Police Department. Containing statements taken by investigators and tips people had called in to police, it dispelled any illusion Tacho had that her brother was still alive.

“I’m very upset because once you read that report you know Jimmy is no longer missing, you know he’s been gone since that night that he disappeared,” Tacho told KGUN.

She believes someone knows what happened to her brother, who would now be 40 years old. Anyone with information is asked to call 88-CRIME.

An age-progression photo on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children website shows what he might look like today. The site also has a database of other missing children cases in Arizona.

» Tacho had much more to say about the case. Read the full story on KGUN.