AMBER ALERT

Ashley Flores is missing! FALSE!

Here is an email that I received a few days ago. This is an example of an Urban Legend Missing Child Chain Letter. It started out as a prank and now it's been circulating for years. Read the email, then read why it IS NOT TRUE!

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Amber Alert.

Staff Sergeant Rick W*******
R**** Police Department
1007 N. E** St.
R**** , Mo. 65***
(573) 364-****
Fax (573) 364-****

Please look at the picture, read what her mother says, then forward this message on.





My 13 year old girl, Ashley Flores, is missing. She has been missing for now two weeks.

Maybe if everyone passes this on, someone will see this child. That is how the girl from Stevens Point was found by circulation of her picture on tv. The internet circulates even overseas, South America , and Canada etc.
Please pass this to everyone in your address book. With GOD on her side she will be found.

I am asking you all, begging you to please forward this email on to anyone and everyone you know, PLEASE.

It is still not too late. Please help us. If anyone knows anything, please contact me at: HelpfindAshleyFlores@yahoocom


I am including a picture of her. All prayers are appreciated!! ' It only takes 2 seconds to forward this. If it was your child, you would want all the help you could get!!

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It's a heart wrenching email - who wouldn't want to help a mother find her missing daughter. But don't worry, Ashley is NOT missing! The email seems fishy from the start, it doesn't provide the kind of information that a legitimate Amber Alert would have.

According to snopes.com:

...All we're provided with is the ambiguous statement that a "Deli manager from Philadelphia, Pa" has a 13-year-old daughter who has been missing "for two weeks," and even that information seems to have been tacked on to the message by someone other than its originator. It even includes phrases taken word-for-word from previous missing child hoax e-mails, such as Christopher John Mineo and Kelsey Brooke Jones.

Meanwhile, the one piece of identifying information provided in the message, a yahoo.com e-mail address, produces a "no such user" error when mail is sent to it, and a variety of searches through news accounts and law enforcement and missing child web sites, including the site of the Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), fails to turn up any mention of a missing girl named "Ashley Flores."

So is there a real Ashley Flores? According to About.com Urban Legends:

Though she hasn't really gone missing, it does appear that Ashley Flores
exists, and lives in Philadelphia. Tracking links from a version of the missing
person alert posted on MySpace.com, I found an exact match ... [of her picture] ... The images were posted by someone using the screen name "Vixter609," whom I found blogging under the same alias on MySpace.com, with her given name listed as "Vicki," her age as 17, and her city of residence as Philadelphia.

When I contacted Vicki to ask what, if anything, she knew about Ashley Flores and her status as a "missing person," I received the following reply (reproduced verbatim):

ashley flores is not missing it was a merly a joke that got completely out of hand please imform everyone that e-mail that she is NOT missing it was a joke im sorry about any confusion

Beware of chain letters like these. Check them out before forwarding them. Why pass along incorrect information?