Missing -- Hey, Look, Anecdotal Ledes!

Anecdotal ledes were certainly not required on this exercise. You were graded on how well you executed an strong, concise, fact-supported lede; and not based on which lede style you tried.

Still, I'm happy that some of you got away from basic ledes and tried anecdotes. Here's a few anecdotal lede/nut graf/telling quote combos:

When Jason Abare learned he would have to pay upwards of $800 a month in child support to his ex-wife, the decision to leave Cleveland was an easy one.

“I wasn’t going to give her a penny, not with the hell that woman put me through,” he said.

The 31-year-old carpenter skipped town, traveling around the country while avoiding authorities and refusing to pay child support.

Until his recent arrest and transport back to Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County Jail earlier this year, Abare was but one of 57,152 men and women reported missing in the state of Ohio over this past year, according to statistics from the U.S. Justice Department. The case represents a growing trend in the state, one that has resulted in the ongoing disappearance of nearly 9,000 people, the department reports.

“I’ve worked around missing persons for the past 10 years, and it’s rare finding someone after more than a year,” Sgt. Manuel Cortez of the Cleveland Police Department said. “We find a lot of people disappear because they’ve got troubles, want to leave them behind and start over again.”

... and this ...

Two years after Sabrina’s parents got divorced, she was found by police a New York street, shoplifting and prostituting to get by.

After a change to her family, Sabrina, who requested anonymity and only gave her first name, said she just couldn’t take it anymore.

“I hated my stepfather,” Sabrina said. “He got drunk and hit my mom and expected us to wait on him like we were his slaves or something.

So the now 14-year-old found an older man going to New York, and convinced him to let her come along.

Sabrina is one of more than 450,000 runaway juveniles nationwide, according to U.S. Justice Department statistics. In Ohio, three of four missing persons reported last year were runaways, and 6,500 have not been found or located, the statistics say.

Sgt. Manuel Cortez of the Clevland Police Department, said it is rare finding a missing person after more than a year.

“We find a lot of people disappear because they’ve got troubles, want to leave and start all over again,” Manuel said.

... and this ...

Jason Abare currently sits in the county jail contemplating the circumstances that brought him there and the “bad luck” he believed led to his arrest.

Abare, 31, is detained on charges of nonsupport after fleeing the state to avoid paying monthly alimony checks to support his former wife and their four children. After years on the run, he was finally discovered by police after being pulled over for drunk driving.

Abare is one of the thousands of people in the United States who have gone missing in the past year. The problem of missing persons is one of great magnitude across the country. In Ohio alone, over 57,000 people have been reported “missing” in the past year. The reasons behind these many disappearances are widely varied.

Some, like Abare, go missing to avoid family issues that they do not want to deal with. Sabrina Diaz, a 14-year-old Cleveland resident, ran away from home to escape an abusive stepfather. “I hated my stepfather. He’s a jerk. He got drunk and hit my mom and expected us to wait on him like we were his slaves or something,” she said.

That's not to say there weren't some great straight lede/nut graf/telling quote combos, like this one:

Last year 57,152 people were reported missing in Ohio according to the U.S. Justice Department, but it may not be for the reasons you think.

When someone goes missing it is many people’s first reaction to assume that they were a victim of a bona fide crime like being kidnapped, robbed or murdered. This is rarely the case in comparison to the number of people who leave home decidedly for various reasons.

“We find a lot of people disappear because they’ve got troubles, want to leave them behind and start over again. A lot of people think about it, and some do more than think about it,” said Sgt. Manuel Cortez. Cortez works for the police department in Cleveland.

... and this one, where the nut graf and the telling quote were in fact the same thing ...

People go missing for a variety of different reasons, most commonly because they want to escape the life they had for a new, better one.

“We find a lot of people disappear because they’ve got troubles, want to leave them behind and start over again,” said Sgt. Manuel Cortez of the Cleveland Police Department. “A lot of people think about it, and some do more than think about it.”

... and this one was pretty good, too ...

In Ohio, people are being reported missing in astonishingly high numbers and it’s not just kidnappings, but rather much more than that.

Nearly 9,000 people remain missing and all for different reasons. These people are runaway kids, old people with Alzheimers, people running from their debts, young men and women in love, and even a few crime victims, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

While people assume that when a person they know goes missing it must be a crime, Police estimate that there are no more than 100 true crime victims and could be as few as 40 or 50.

But I was a bit taken aback by the use of "astonishingly" in the lede. I thought it was a bit much. Yeah, I know the info you were given offered that judgmental word, but all because you're given a word doesn't mean you have to use it. I didn't know if there was enough info to indicate it was astonishing, especially considering 300 million people live in this country.

Still, what do you think? Fair context or over the top? And which ledes do you think worked best here, and why?