Taking Teekah

You could feel the energy, the moment you walked in, laughter echoed off the walls. The smell of burgers and fries hung in the air. Bowling balls rumbled down lands, followed by the clatter of pins. This was a Saturday night in Tacoma, Washington. There were a lot of people there that night. Oh yeah, at least 350. January 23rd, 1999, the neon sign read, "New Frontier Lanes." That glow drew people in on a damp chilly evening. Teresa Chepesky was one of them. So we get there and we get our shoes and we go to our lanes. Teresa was there with two of her daughters, her boyfriend, some family and some friends. And Tika sees the video game. Tika was Teresa's two year old. She picked out a game over in the bowling alley's arcade. It was my turn to bowl and I told my brother and my boyfriend, "Make sure you watch Tita so nobody, you know, nothing happens to her." Teresa bowled her frame and something did happen. She was gone. That was more than two decades ago. The search for Tika began that night and it still is not over. My kids have suffered for 26 years not knowing where their sister's been. I'm Josh Manquets and this is Missing in America, a podcast from Dateline. This episode is "Taking Tika." Please listen closely because you or someone you know might have information that could help solve this case. And finally give Tika's family the answers they've been searching for. I'm going to do my part to find what happened to my daughter. Tacoma Washington is a city of contrasts. Several streets buzzing with life, Mount Reneer, a quiet giant in the distance. In one house on Tacoma's east side, life was anything but quiet. Don't it look like having all those daughters around? Well, I could say that, you know, a lot of emotions going on in the house and different attitudes, but they're my everything. Teresa by every definition is a girl mom. Back then she was 27 and raising five daughters on her own. It was always fun times in the house. That's Catarina, Tika's older sister. Back in 1999, she was six years old. She was such an energetic little girl. She had the prettiest, big, brown eyes. She was so loving and just always wanting to be around her big sisters or around her mother. She slept with mama. She went with me everywhere. I couldn't go nowhere without her. That's why you took her to the Mollie alley. Exactly. Teresa says that Saturday started out normally. Me and my boyfriend and my three daughters, we went on post. He was in the military then? Yes, he was in the military. And on our way home, we stopped at Taco Bell to get the kids some food. Teresa says her eldest twin daughters were already with their godmother. She dropped Catarina off with her aunt before the evening began. I can see how four or five kids around when it's bowling. It can be a lot. So maybe you want to park some of them somewhere else? Right. Right. Teresa got her youngest two, Tika and Tamika ready for a night at the bowling alley. Tell me what Tika was wearing that day. Green, Tweety Bird shirt, white sweats and white and black air Jordans. And her hair was up in a ponytail. New Frontier Lane seemed the safest of places. Was that a place you regularly went? The week before I went and I took my twins and there was nobody in there. So I wasn't worried. So I said, "Well, hey, we'll go back the next week." I wish I would have never went because that's when the nightmare started. By around 10 pm, the big group was settled at their lanes. Teresa kept an eye on her 10-month-old Tamika who sat in her carrier and on Tika, who ran back and forth between her and the arcade. And she seen her uncle go up there and her uncle was playing the game and he won a stuffed animal and he gave it to his niece and Tika, you know, she gave it to her baby sister. So he gave it to Tika and she gave it to Tamika? Yep. Her sister still has that bear. Then Tika spotted a racing game and she was at that driving game when you went to bowl. Oh yeah, she was there. I seen her. Teresa says that's when she told her boyfriend and brother to watch Tika while she bowled. Her attention was diverted for maybe 15 seconds and I turned back around and I looked up and I asked him where is Tika and they were like, she's up there. They assumed Tika was still playing in the crowded arcade and just couldn't see her. After all, she was quite small. I went up to the game, looked in between the games around the corner. I went to the end of the bowling alley and went into the bathroom down there. She was nowhere around. And you're getting a little bit more frantic every second. Oh yeah, because I know my baby wouldn't leave me. Teresa rushed into another bathroom and ran right into her sister-in-law. And I asked her, have you seen Tika and she said no, she's not in here. And so I went up to the announcement desk because there was an officer there. He was off duty and I told him, I said, my daughter's gone. The officer got on the PA system, telling everyone to watch for a two-year-old in a green Tweety Bird shirt. Twenty minutes later, he called for backup. When officers from the Tacoma Police Department arrived, Teresa met them outside. I was with the officer at one corner of the entrance. My sister-in-law comes to me and says, hey, that woman has your daughter. That's when things took another frightening turn. And I was like, what do you mean she has my daughter? Teresa Chepesky was outside the bowling alley, talking with officers about her missing two-year-old daughter Tika. That's when her sister-in-law told her, a woman had her daughter. She has her baby in her car and she's getting ready to leave. Teresa was living a nightmare, frantically looking for Tika. And then suddenly, that nightmare had a new dimension. Someone had grabbed her other daughter, Tamika. We're not talking about Tika here. We're talking about Tamika. We're talking about Tamika, my 10 month old at the time. In the chaos of the search for Tika, a woman had gathered up Tamika and was about to leave with her. Teresa ran to the car and saw her daughter Tamika with, a woman who had been sitting behind their group in the bowling alley earlier that evening. Someone who had made Teresa and her brother uncomfortable. She was asking us, can I hold your baby? A woman asked to hold her brother's baby and he let her. But then, she wouldn't give my nephew back to him. And so, he told her, give me my son, or we're going to have problems in here. That's very alarming. Very, very. Her name was Rita Miller. She was in her 30s. And now she had Tamika. And she took her to her car. Rita had strapped Tamika into her car and was ready to drive off. And I told her, that's my daughter, give her back. She was like, no, that's not your daughter. And I said, if you don't give me my daughter, I'm bringing the police. Rita refused. They have to physically take Tamika back from this woman and give her back to Teresa who's still searching for Tika. Yes, something along those lines. It's Sergeant Julie Deere of the Tacoma Police Department. She inherited this case in 2021. And for her, this was personal. So when I was 10 years old, somebody broke into our house and almost yanked me out of bed. He grabbed my arm, said my mom wanted me. She told him to come get me. My sister woke up, started yelling, and then so he let go of me and ran away. First family had emigrated from Russia to Tacoma. She says her parents reported the incident to police, but no one really followed up. Since we were immigrants, and my parents didn't speak very good English and kind of got thrown to the waste side the whole reporting issue, and it wasn't looked into. For Sergeant Deer, Tika's case is more than just a file. It is a chance to do what no one did for her. So, that made it impact as far as how I look at some of these cases. Deer says officers back then quickly realized Rita, the woman who tried to take Tika, had mental health issues. They put her in a patrol car, and while she was in a patrol car, she had made an attempt on her own life, and she had to get involuntarily committed. Tamika was now safely in her mother's arms. At the same time, Tika was still missing. Did Rita know where she was? If so, one thing was certain. She was not talking, not that night anyway. Theresa spent hours at the bowling alley, searching, talking with police. Soon, there was not much else for Theresa to do but go home, and pray for answers. She also had to tell her girls, including Katarina, who was six. So, my mom had called my aunt Rose and told her that we needed to go to my grandma's house. Everybody was meeting up there that, you know, something had happened. Let my godmom know so my older sisters could come as well. And what did you think had happened? I think, like, a car accident or something. Like, nothing serious or nothing happened to my sisters. But, no, my mom comes in, she's crying, like, just face red, blotchy, just crying hysterical, coming in and was like, you know, Tika's gone. Tika's not with us, she's missing. A missing sister is hard for any child to comprehend. It didn't really sink in until, like, a couple of days later, when I'm looking around and Tika's not here. You know, like, where is she? Where is she at? Why, why isn't my sister here? The days and weeks that followed were a whirlwind. Police and volunteers fanned out across the wooded area around the bowling alley, searching, hoping, for any clue. If you find anything at all that you think is of interest, don't pick it up. Four dozen volunteers stand shoulder to shoulder. Searching for clues into the disappearance of two-year-old Tika Lewis. It feels like law enforcement really responded from the get-go. They were out there, yes. There were multiple teams of different people out there. Searching the rescue was out there. The FBI came out. Everybody. I mean, everybody participated in this. What kind of searches did they do in what areas were they searching? So, grid searches, I want to say that they did the helicopter searches and knocking on doors and canvassing. People went out literally to apartment complexes, just knocking on every single door. Have you heard anything? Do you know anything? Have you seen anything type of thing? None of that led anywhere. No. You didn't find anything that led back to Tika. You find anything else? They did find some clothing that were folded in the wooded area. And that's still in evidence, but nobody knows who who's it is. Teresa appeared on local TV in anguish. To that person or person who has my daughter, how can you live with yourself knowing you have someone else's daughter? All I ask is for you to bring my daughter home safely. That's when people started to ask, hey, you know, we see you on the news. We see your mom on the news. I'm talking about how your sister's not here anymore. Do you know what happened? Catarina's classmates had tons of questions. She had no answers. No one did. Weeks became months. Still no sign of Tika. Then a disturbing story surfaced. Teresa heard about something that had happened just months before Tika vanished. At the very same bowling alley. A man assaults a little boy in the bathroom of that bowling alley. Exactly. Sergeant Deer says the man sexually attacked the boy then took off. A witness described him as a white male with curly brown hair and a beard. Teresa had to wonder. Could that man have abducted Tika? Police were asking the same question, except they never caught that man. It was a lead that went nowhere. There were several incidents that happened and everything was investigated. Teresa heard another story about something that happened at a park near the bowling alley. The same day Tika vanished. A man was seen trying to motion kids into a bathroom. According to police reports obtained by Dateline, the man described as a white male with dark hair was chased off and drove away in a blue potty act grand-am. It's not clear if that man was ever found and Sergeant Deer says she doesn't know much about that incident. However, the detail about the car that man drove seemed to match up with a report from another witness in Tika's disappearance. At about 10-20 is when the announcements were started being made about the missing girl. Around the same time, a lady was pulling into the bowling alley parking lot and she said that a punny act grand-am pulled out of there super fast, almost running into her. She was shown a montage of different cars and the one that she picked out most matched a punny act grand-am. The color, she said, appeared to be like a reddish, almost purple-ish color. And the year may be '98, '99. No license plate. She didn't get license plate. Could the driver of that grand-am have taken Tika? And no information on who might have been driving or who else might have been in the car? No. Okay, what do you do with that information? Well, back then, they looked at any owners of punny acts and I don't think it provided anything good back then. The case eventually went cold. Tika never left her sister's hearts. We used to do like a song. We would sing like Tweekle Tweekle Little Star, but we would add Tika's name into it and we would be like, you know, we wonder where you are. Birthdays came and went. July 4th is a little different for you than it is for the rest of us, isn't it? Yeah. The 4th of July is her birthday. Every year, Teresa blew out a candle for her daughter. Her wish, the same one every time, to finally have an answer. Would that wish of her has ever come true? A potential break in the case was coming. Police will not say what the tip was or what cold case it is related to. 26 years later, a mysterious tip and a massive search that could change everything. 22 years after Tika Lewis disappeared, Sergeant Julie Deere was handed the case file. She picked up where detectives before her left off, starting with Rita Miller, the woman who was stopped from kidnapping Tika's 10-month-old baby sister that night. What made you want to keep going on that? So, I mean, it was obviously a question that had remained not fully answered and Teresa kept bringing it up. So I wanted to answer that for her as well. And so I found her and she lives in a home right now for certain individuals. Her mental condition is deteriorated too much for her to be of any help. Yeah. Yeah. She's not quite there. Teresa believes something should have been done about Rita much sooner. She should have been charged that night for attempting to deduct an of my 10-month-old, but she wasn't. And now she's not in any condition to help. None. I don't. Deere says she can't speak for the actions of the investigators who came before her, but says many good detectives worked the case. If they thought Rita was connected to Tika's disappearance, she says, they would have followed that lead to the end. It might have been too late to ask Rita, which she may or may not have known. It was not too late for Sergeant Deere to chase down another lead. One that detectives before her had already started looking into. A 911 call placed on the night of Tika's disappearance. The phone call wasn't discovered until around 2020. That's when COVID happened and I think people started looking into it and then all hell broke loose. It was from a mother who said her adult son was acting strangely. Her son had made some suspicious statements to her so she called for a welfare check on him. According to police reports the man asked his mother if she would leave the country with him. She called and said he called and asked her if she would leave town with him if he needed to leave or something along those lines which is why would he need to leave town particularly on that night. This was about two hours after Tika went missing so that is what initially brought him to our attention. And I guess he lived near the bowling alley. He lived in the area and he at some point owned a Pontiac. Police know the man's name and so do we. However for investigative reasons they have asked us not to use it. So for this story we're calling the man John Doe. So Mr. Doe was about maybe early 40s at the time that Tika disappeared. He was actually independently wealthy but had some mental health issues and sexual DVNC issues. Nothing with children mostly with adults. Give me some some idea of what we're talking about with sexual DVNC here because that's a pretty broad term. So like calling his pastor's wife and telling her the things that he'd like to do with her and that sort of stuff. So like some harassment and intimidation. Yeah but things he'd like to do with her in a sexual nature. Did he have a criminal record? There was like petty stuff maybe like car theft and things like that. This is not someone who'd been locked up on some sex charge or some offense regarding children. No no no. There was something else. Deer says Mr. Doe also matched the description of someone a witness saw at the bowling alley. The night Tika vanished. There was maybe a couple days after it happened it was a younger individual teenager that had said that he saw what he thought was this man walking with a mixed race little girl and he thought it was odd. Back in 1999 that teenage witness said he saw the man lingering near the little girl. And she played a driving game at the arcade. According to police reports the teen later saw the man and the girl heading toward the front desk and the man seemed to be trying to keep up with her. The witness said the man seemed nervous and out of place and described him as white with a pockmarked face and wearing a blue checkered flannel shirt. As police pieced it all together they compared that witness description with a photo of John Doe. And when we looked at his booking photo he had a pockmark face he had maybe shoulder-ish curly-ish hair his white male early 40s. He matched that description. And the little girl he was seen with Tika is black white and Native American so that sounded a lot like her too. 20 years after Tika disappeared Sergeant Deer says other officers track down that witness again and his story remained mostly the same but with one new detail. He added that he saw the man holding the little girl's hand and actually walking toward the front door to leave the bowling alley. Officers showed him a photo of John Doe along with those of several other men. This was shown to the person that described the individual he thought he saw walking with Tika and along with five other photos which is what we call a photo montage and he was unable to pick anybody on that photo montage but apparently when he saw that particular photo he paused for a second which kind of made an impression as well. Tika's mom says police showed her that same photo montage. In 2020 the detectives wanted me to come down to look at some photos. They're trying to see if you recognize someone from the bowling alley. Yeah, I looked at them and I remember photo number three and I believe I seen them that night at the bowling alley. Photo number three was John Doe. In November 2023 Sergeant Deer paid him a visit. The conversation did not yield much. Mr. Doe insisted he had never been to New Frontier lanes. Yes he said he did own a Pontiac but claimed it was no match to the description of the one seen speeding away that night. So he owned a Pontiac at one point and then he also rented a Pontiac and the one that he owned we talked to him about it and he said it was actually a Pontiac Grand Prix and he said it was Fire Red and that's a completely different shaped vehicle. And then the one that he rented I tried to run down the information on it since it was so long ago I couldn't find any information on it. And he denied being there. He denied being there. He said that he never went bowling to that particular bowling alley. So I can't I can't put him in that area. Deer and her partner left John Doe's house with little more than they arrived with. When they returned months later John Doe was gone. We went back to his house in January of 2024 and we were informed that he was deceased. Thankfully he was recently deceased and the medical examiner had his we call a blood card so we were able to collect that and get his DNA that way. So if you ever find a body or some other genetic material you can match him to it or rule them out. Yes. Deer says the late John Doe died of natural causes and remains a person of interest. Teresa Chepesky believes he might have had the answers she's been waiting for. This man was sick. I think he harmed my daughter and then heard her. And me as a mom I'm going to do my part to find what happened to my daughter. Clearly police were interested in this guy but they couldn't build a case against him before he died because they waited all these years. You think they waited too long. Of course they did. Katarina shares her mother's feelings. Even though that this is one of our solid leads it's not going to go anywhere. Whatever he knew he took with him to the great. He took with him so even if he was the person that did take Tiko will never know. Sergeant Deer says her department started investigating John Doe as soon as that information came in but any action had to be legally supported and based on facts. That includes writing warrants waiting on lab results and following up on tips. It is all an evidentiary threshold. The public may not always appreciate. The truth is we still don't know what happened to Tika. We don't know if John Doe had any involvement at all. We don't know if Tika simply wandered off. We do know. This case is still making headlines. Neighbors are concerned and looking for answers as police continue to search the backyard of a Tacoma home. On May 19th, 2025 a large-scale search began at a home in Tacoma, Washington. A location just a few minutes away from where Tika disappeared. Drone footage showed multiple tents set up and Tacoma police officers spread out across the property digging. The department tried their best to keep the whole operation hush hush. It could be any of the city's 147 cold cases. Who owned that property being searched and what were officers hoping to find? On day three of the search we spoke with Teresa by phone. She said there were whispers this search was for Tika. On day yesterday morning and I seen the drone shots and then I seen some last night and they're digging deeper into the ground. They brought more dogs out yesterday. Teresa says she spoke with neighbors to find out who lived at that home back in 1999. She found out some information. All of it speculative. There's a lady that lives across the street that has been there for 45 years and she knows what was going on in that house. Then, while we were still on the phone, Theresa got another phone call. - Can I call you right back? - Theresa called us back. - So that was the chief of police, and she confirmed that they were digging for Tika, but they did not find her. - Now, she is experiencing the difficult mix of emotions so many families of the missing go-through. It's both disappointment and relief. I'm relieved, but at the same time we're back to square one. - On May 21st, the Tacoma Police Department released a statement about the search. They confirmed it was related to Tika, and that a tip had prompted the investigation. The details of that tip remain unknown. Police said they exhaustively followed it for three days, but in the end, they found nothing. That's all police are saying at this point, Theresa is not giving up. - I ask myself every day who would want to harm a baby, and I hope when they all find out what happened to her. - Sergeant Deer says she's still on this, and it's still personal. - At the time that I started looking at this case, I have a boy about the same age as Tika was when she went missing. So for me, just knowing how a parent could feel when a little person could go missing like that, for me, it just heart wrenching. - Tika has another little sister now, Tika. Born just a few years after Tika went missing, Tika never met her sister, of course. - But we've told her everything about her. We showed her videos, pictures. Everything she needs to know about her sister, she knows. - Tanika knows the place where her sister vanished, new frontier lanes, January 23rd, 1999. The building itself is gone now. What remains are memories, and Tika's is one of them. - What's your advice to other parents? - Hold your babies tight. Don't never let them go. Don't trust nobody around your babies. Nobody, and if you're in a public setting, keep an eye on them, 'cause you never know. - It can happen pretty fast, can't it? - It can. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. - Teresa's daughters are all adults now. Even so, through the years, they have always tried to gather and hold a vigil for Tika, the sister who isn't there. - Every year. - Is that help you? - In a way, it kind of does. I still don't say too much at the visuals. I stick to myself, so my silence, my prayers. I send them out every day for her. - Every year, they pray for the little girl who vanished into that January night. - Tika was my everything, everything. Everybody has years and years with their kids. I had two and a half years with Tika, and it wasn't enough. - Here is where you can help. Today, Tika Lewis would be 28 years old. On January 23rd, 1999, she was a child, three feet tall, and 35 pounds. She had black hair, brown eyes, and pierced ears. She was wearing a green, tweety bird t-shirt, with sweatpants, and red, white, and black air Jordans. Anyone with information about Tika's disappearance is asked to call the Tacoma Police Department at 253-591-5950. To learn more about other people we've covered in our Missing in America series, go to DatelineMissingInAmerica.com. There, you'll be able to view age-progressed photos of Tika Lewis, and also submit cases you think we should cover in the future. Thanks for listening. See you Friday's on Dateline, on NBC. Missing in America is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Keanu Reed is the producer of this episode. Brian Drew is the audio editor. Bradley Davis is senior producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer, and Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Robert Siciliano. Bryson Barnes is head of Audio Production.