Teen happy to be home
ALLEGHENY TWP — On the front porch of her family's Locust Lane home Lexis Walker gets a hug. Then a kiss and a pat on her head, then a handshake as people — a neighbor; an older sister; a family friend — drop by to see she's home safe.
This is how the Walker family spent the tail end of what was a long 36-plus hours. It may not be normal family time, but it works, says Lexis' stepfather, Mark Durnell.
“This is exactly how I want to spend tonight,” he said Wednesday evening.
Nearly 48 hours ago, Lexis says, this all started with something seemingly innocuous: an errant horseshoe toss that ended up lost in the water behind her house.
Not so innocuous to her, Lexis said. Upset about losing the horseshoe, she'd searched for what seemed like a long time. When she ended up losing a magnetic stick belonging to her stepfather, Lexis said she felt like she was in big trouble.
“I'm a sensitive person, and I didn't want to get in trouble,” she said. “I just got so scared and wanted to run off — (I) thought it might be better that way.”
But just because Lexis was scared doesn't mean she lost her head. The Allegheny-Clarion Valley eighth grader packed a backpack of supplies, taking a mirror, a pair of tweezers — for ticks, she said — extra socks to keep her feet from getting cold, a kitchen knife (“for safety”), and all the money she had — $10. It was 7 or 8 p.m. Monday.
“I didn't know where I was gonna go,” she said. “I just headed straight out into the woods.”
For a while Lexis had her bearings, she said. She loves nature and animals, and has spent many hours in the woods behind the family's home since moving to Locust Lane in March from Franklin Township. But the farther she went, the less recognizable the woods became. Familiar trails turned into farmers' pastures, and Lexis eventually crossed a road — she didn't know which one — before plunging into the woods again.
On the other side, about 200 yards into the forest, Lexis spent her first night outdoors, sleeping fitfully in a half-made stick tepee and wishing she had never run off.
“It got pretty cold during the night,” she said. “I wanted to be home, in my bed.”
But morning brought Lexis back to her plan, such as it was. She had decided to make for the Slippery Rock area, where an ex-boyfriend lives.
“I guess I just wanted to see him,” she said.
Lexis turned south and started walking again, but navigating in the forest proved more difficult than she anticipated. By mid-afternoon, frustrated and lost, Lexis decided to start building another tepee, but soon gave up.
“I need(ed) to find a way home. I (couldn't) do this anymore,” she said. “I started getting extremely bored and homesick.”
At that moment the people at her home were a lot of things, but bored wasn't one of them. Durnell and Lexis' mother, April Walker, had been searching the countryside for their daughter until 1 or 2 a.m. Tuesday. As day broke, the search effort reignited with a team of more than 45 volunteers.
State police, the Pennsylvania Game Commission and eight volunteer fire departments had personnel and equipment — including a helicopter and search dog — in the field as part of their effort. Their only lead was a note Lexis had written before leaving home.
Durnell declined to reveal the complete contents of the note, but said it “boggled all of our minds,” with its closing words: “You'll find me soon enough.”
Parsing and re-parsing those words was proving enough to drive Durnell crazy. At first he took it to mean that Lexis hadn't gone far; that she would be home soon. The more people he showed the note to, however, the darker the interpretation became. What if she had decided to hurt herself?
“With those words, you think about the best, but you also think about the worst,” he said.
April Walker's mind went there too. The longer the search stretched on, the more desperate she felt.“I feared the worst. I thought we would find her dead body,” Walker said.But Lexis' twin brother, Levi, said he always knew he would see his sister alive again.“I felt like she was still out there, and I felt like she didn't have the will to commit suicide,” he said. “I thought we would still find her.”Search parties would comb the woods and fields for about four miles around the Walker's home on Tuesday. State police eventually suspended the effort at 2 p.m., saying they had found no trace of Lexis and all leads and resources had been exhausted.Lexis was still in the woods, working on her second stick tepee and praying to God, she said, that the helicopter she heard sweeping overhead wouldn't find her.But as the afternoon wore on Lexis became more and more convinced that she wanted to return home. The problem was finding her way back.She used road noise to find her way back to the road, and crossed back into more familiar territory. Lexis' second night in the woods would be spent inside a crashed, abandoned truck.On Wednesday morning, she would surprise Durnell, her mother, and Levi by appearing at the family's home, looking tired, thirsty and hungry. Durnell and Walker had just rushed home, trying to meet state police at their house to give them a cell phone and iPad the twins share. Instead, they found Lexis waiting for them on the front porch.Levi, awakened by his parent's cries of joy, took the screams for something else entirely. The boy who had refused to believe his sister was anything but alive and well briefly thought he had been wrong. Instead, when his parents came up to his room, he was “surprised.”State police interviewed Lexis and her family Wednesday morning. Calls to the Butler barracks requesting information on their investigation were not returned.For Durnell and April Walker, the experience was harrowing. But it also has revealed the character of a community they were still only just getting to know.The couple said they never expected so many volunteers or such dedication to finding and bringing Lexis home. The family says they intend to throw a party to thank all those involved in the effort.“They never stopped. Never,” April Walker said.”Walker said the feeling of relief she had when she saw Lexis had come home is something she'll never forget.“It was the longest day and a half of my life. I felt like a rag doll, really,” she said. “But that moment (she came back); it's better than giving birth to her. That's the feeling I had seeing her.”For Durnell, who said he refused to believe numerous predictions that Lexis had met with foul play, Wednesday was a good day.“Always have faith; always follow your gut,” he said. “I know my daughter. I never gave up on these woods.”Lexis herself, who never did get yelled at for losing that horseshoe — or the magnet stick — said it wasn't her time in the woods that will stick with her. It's what her parents told her about all the people still out looking for her when she got home.“I've learned that there's a lot more people that care about me than I thought there was,” she said.
