Kimberly Lining remembers calling the information number on a flyer for a missing Indigenous woman and learning that the photo on the flyer didn’t even belong to the missing woman.
The frustration born in that moment led Lining to launch the MMIW Search and Hope Alliance, a group of volunteers she mobilizes to help look for missing Indigenous women and girls. Lining partners with Oregon State Police, families, tribes and others to help get the word out on social media and in-person searches.
We talk to Lining about her work.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Kimberly Lining is a commercial truck driver — that’s her day job. But for more than two years now, she has also run the MMIW Search and Hope Alliance. It is an all-volunteer group that organizes and conducts searches for missing and murdered Indigenous people. The group now has dozens of volunteers and a waiting list of families who desperately want their help.
Kimberly Lining joins us now. It’s great to have you on Think Out Loud.
Kimberly Lining: Thank you for having me.
Miller: So I mentioned that you have a paying job, which I imagine is tiring and takes a lot out of you. How did you also become the leader of this group that looks for missing and Indigenous people, women and girls in particular, in your spare time?
Lining: Purpose. I think when you get called for purpose, you answer that call. For me, in my own personal life, God just called me and was like, “Hey, you have purpose, and this is going to be your purpose.” And I just took off. I never thought it was going to be this big, but between my day job in truck driving, now it’s just turned into this.
Miller: Was there a particular story or case that you heard about that made you say, “I have to do something?”
Lining: So it wasn’t one in particular. It was the year that it really kind of exploded that the 59 women went missing in the state of Montana. And I have grown up my entire life going to Montana and I had no idea. And I’m thinking, there’s no way it’s 59. So I really started digging into it and I thought, this is crazy. How is it possible that this many women have gone missing in a state that doesn’t have a populace, like say, California or something. So then when I got here, I started looking into our cases here, and I was just flabbergasted at the ridiculous amount that were missing, and just nobody had ever heard of it or anything.
Miller: Did you have any background in investigations, searches or the criminal justice system before you did that?
Lining: Zero, none.
Miller: So where did you start?
Lining: I started by calling numbers on flyers and calling different departments that these missing cases were supposed to be on.
Miller: The numbers on flyers, meaning families or friends had put these flyers up saying, “had you seen this person,” and then you called…?
Lining: No. Actually, the flyers, I came upon them on the internet for our state and I started calling like, “Has this person been located?” Because I wanted to know if I could have that information.
Miller: So you were calling law enforcement?
Lining: Yes, tribal police, city law enforcement, state. This is how it started.
Miller: “What happened with this case? I saw this person. What happened?”
Lining: Yeah. And they’re like, “Well, this is the right case, but this is the wrong picture. This is the right picture, but this is the wrong county.” And the more I dug into it and the more I started calling around, the more there was so much disorganization, and nothing was where it needed to be at.
Miller: And this is even at the official level. These were flyers that had been put out by authorities, and that’s where you were finding, even in this basic way, these dumb mistakes, for lack of a better word.
Lining: Yep.
Miller: So you saw this problem. How did you start arriving at solutions?
Lining: Again, there was no one particular thing. It was a culmination of things. And I think that it’s so easy for people to say, “Well, you should do that and you should do this.” I’m a very busy person, and I get really tired of excusing really terrible behavior and terrible things happening, and nobody’s doing anything about it. And I’m like, what if I could do something about it?
So one idea, one person, and I just drove towards it. That’s it. I was like, let’s go look for this person. If they’re supposed to be in Portland, it’s my city, I live here, so I need to do something about it. And maybe more people are going to come along, and they ended up coming with me.
Miller: So at the beginning, were you literally driving around at times looking for people? Or is this more sort of putting the word out, finding volunteers, doing online searches?
Lining: No, it was driving around downtown Portland. I actually started out using my cell phone and pictures of the people, and going around to houseless encampments, members of the community that might struggle with some other issues, and asking, “Have you seen this person because I heard they were last here.” And I’ve been able to locate, when I first started this, by doing those things. Then I started printing flyers and then handing them out. And then it got bigger and bigger until it snowballed into what it is now.
Miller: How many cases would you say, right now, are you actively working on, you and this network that you’ve put together?
Lining: I can tell you that in the last week I’ve had five cases come in, including one this morning.
Miller: So cases coming in, meaning families contacting you. Without divulging any details about these new cases or other ones, what kinds of things do people tell you when they ask for your help?
Lining: Well, it just kind of depends on the case. It depends on if it’s a child or an adult. A lot of times it’s just, “Can you help me?” For instance, “My father’s been missing since 2022. He struggles with some mental health issues and nobody’s doing anything about it. Can you help me?” If it’s a child, sometimes it’s, “Hi, my child’s run away. Can you help me?” Or, “My child is in danger and we suspect it might be human trafficking. Can you help me?” And if I can’t help them, then it’s a referral over to law enforcement entities and resources that we do have available to us.
Miller: How would you describe your relationship, at this point, with various law enforcement agencies? You have local ones, state police, tribal police departments.
Lining: Tribal police, they’re a little bit of a different duck. So I would say that’s a teeter-totter right there. Different tribes, different traditions, things like that. The Native people, we are big on relationship building and just really trying to culminate those relationships sometimes. Because I’m from the outside…
Miller: You mean you’re Native yourself, but you’re not necessarily a citizen of the tribal governments that you’re contacting, so you’re seen as an outsider?
Lining: Yes. So sometimes that creates a little bit of a barrier. However, Oregon State Police has been really amazing, and their tribal liaison Glendon Smith, that guy, he’s outstanding. They have one tribal liaison, and he oversees just so much and he works so hard. So to be able to collaborate with them and the way they treat me, they take it very seriously. So when I have cases, sometimes I’ll refer them over there if they can help me.
Miller: Do you find you’re acting sometimes like a liaison yourself between law enforcement and families who may have mistrust of law enforcement?
Lining: Absolutely. There’s a lot of that, and it’s very understandable. Our relationship with Gresham Police Department, Portland Police Bureau has been great. I think that people really forget how understaffed they are, and sometimes the answers that they want aren’t easy answers. So that’s where our group also comes in. And it is like liaison.
Miller: You wrote this on your Facebook group page: “This is a trigger warning. We post about death, the missing, anti-human trafficking, domestic violence, and talk about extreme cases. We speak about body recovery and remains. If you cannot handle these things, this is not the group for you.” How have you been putting together the volunteers that now are working alongside you?
Lining: Well, we started out with just people coming along with me from various backgrounds, whether it was search and rescue, wildland searching, all these different backgrounds. We all just kind of started meeting together and we formed this really great relationship. And now we do trainings, or learning sessions is what I like to call them. Cadaver lab learning session, where we go and see, touch, feel dead cadavers. Well, I hope they’re dead, they’re cadavers. [Laughs] Sorry about that.
Miller: Dead bodies.
Lining: Yeah, they’re dead bodies.
Miller: Why did you want to include that in your learning sessions?
Lining: Because we’re out there looking for remains on a lot of these cases, and they could be in various different states of decomposition. And it’s important that our volunteers know this is really happening, this is really real, and to cut down on that part of traumatic effects. Let’s introduce you to the dead before we come upon them.
Miller: You mentioned earlier that some of the people you’re looking for are victims of trafficking. How common is that in your experience in the people that you’re looking for?
Lining: It is super common. Trafficking in the Indigenous community is so, so common. And of course, Indigenous girls and boys go for a higher price when it comes to trafficking more than other demographics. And that’s because of so many different things [like] jurisdictional gaps … and I don’t know, there are so many things adding into that.
But we’re also on the I-5 corridor. So when they go missing out of Alaska, when it comes to trafficking, they traffic them down through Canada and into the Pacific Northwest. And unfortunately, the Pacific Northwest is one of the biggest spots for child sex tourism and trafficking. Once they hit the I-5 corridor, that’s it. They can go down to LA, they can go down to the southern borderlands, they can go over to Las Vegas and other huge urban metropolises, and they’re never to be seen again.
Miller: A number of our western neighbors now, starting with Washington, but including California, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona, have set up different versions of dedicated alert systems for missing Indigenous people. Oregon has not done so. What difference do you think a system like that would make?
Lining: It would make a vital, life and death difference, and we have been pushing for an alert system here in the state of Oregon to be implemented. And the really, really crazy thing about that is they passed a House bill to have this Indigenous persons alert done. I think it was Ampkwa Advocacy down in Southern Oregon that really footnoted that bill.
And then it came to a stop, and prices, and they set it to the side. So myself and some other collaboratives that I work with, we really started digging into that. And when we dug into that, we realized the state of Oregon already pays for the software, and it’s the same software that puts out the Amber Alerts. The only thing the state needs to do is implement it. So that’s literally gonna be costless, and it would make a huge difference.
Miller: I wanna go back to that trigger warning that you put on your Facebook group, saying if you’re gonna be a member of this group, you should know what you’re getting into. How do you deal with the stories you hear, the trauma that you are exposed to from families, and the daily work of this?
Lining: At first, I noticed I was getting kind of snippety and really angry about certain things. And I thought, man, what am I going to do? A lot of it’s prayer for me in my personal life. And a lot of it is volunteer work within my community and staying in contact with some of the families that we’ve helped out. Compartmentalization also helps very much. That’s a skill that you have to learn over time, and I’ve been lucky enough to have that skill.
Miller: Why do you keep doing this?
Lining: Because nobody else is. And I’m not going to continue staying silent while I know about these things. If more people stopped turning a blind eye, and would stand up and say, “I want to do something about it,” then we have the opportunity to put an end to this crisis. And until that happens, I’m going to continue doing what I do.
Miller: Kimberly Lining, thanks very much.
Lining: Thank you.
Miller: Kimberly Lining is the founder of MMIW Search and Hope Alliance.
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