I Love This Story

[Content Note: Abduction.]

Fifteen-year-old Temar Boggs of Lancaster, PA, rescued a little girl who'd been abducted from his neighborhood last Thursday night:

Boggs, onscreen, a black teenage boy wearing a t-shirt with a pug on it: We were, um, helping an old lady move a couch, and so then, um, a guy came around the corner asking if we saw the little missing girl, and we said no, 'cause we didn't see her. So we went back into the house, and, um, we were watching TV for a little, and Cane's (ph) mother came and said that there was a bunch of cops outside, looking for a little girl, and so we should go look for her.

And so we got like a whole bunch of my friends that I know, like, around Lancaster Arms and Lancaster Green, to go search for her, and we walked a pretty good amount—distance, to look for her, like, in the woods [points in one direction] and where they said she could have been gone [points in the other direction]. And so then we came back, like, we couldn't find her, so we came back, and, uh, the whole block was filled with cops and firefighters.

And so then I was sitting on Joseph's bike—which is the boy you saw me with—uh, his bike, and I had a feeling in my stomach that I was gonna find her. And so then Chris was with me—Chris had a bike, too, so I was going and he said he was gonna come, so I said, "Okay, go, come with me." And so then I went over back there [gestures to an area near where he's sitting], uh, and like in the general area we were before, but I just went a little more deeper over there.

And so I saw this, like, suspicious car. And I looked into the passenger seat; it was a little girl, and I said, "I think that's her." And so we chased—we followed it for about five minutes, and then we noticed that it was—it was her! And so we chased it for like fifteen minutes—chased the car for fifteen minutes around like Gale (ph) Park and that area, like, down those like little streets.

Uh, and so then he went down Gale Park Road—ah, I chased him going down that hill, and he turned around, and I guess he got scared, or offended, or [shrugs] yeah scared, that we were chasing him, and so then he let her out, and she got out—she, like, stood there for a little and then she at—she ran to me. And she said that she needed her mommy.

And so then I put her on my shoulders, 'cause I had the bike—I put her on my shoulders and rode the bike halfway, and then noticed that it was too dangerous to ride like that, and so then I carried her for the past, um, couple meters that I had of getting her to a law enforcement—or her parents.

And so I took her and—well, first she didn't want to leave my arms, because she was scared they were going to do something to her, so I said, "No, they're not going to anything; they're gonna take you to your mom." And she said, "Okay." And she went with them.

"I had a feeling in my stomach that I was gonna find her." I love this kid. Blub.

CNN has video of five-year-old Jocelyn Rojas' grandmother Tracey Clay giving Temar Boggs ALL THE HUGS.

The suspect in the abduction, described as "a white male between 50 and 70 years old" has not yet been found.

The bravery and tenacity of this kid (and his friends). The decency. He almost certainly saved Jocelyn Rojas' life, on his bike, chasing a car through a series of cul-de-sacs. Wow.

[Note: I realize that the timing of this story will inevitably underwrite the urge to make some kind of observation that juxtaposes this story with the Trayvon Martin case, but it would be very easy for that to lead to a thread that disappears Temar Boggs' individual humanity, so let's keep the focus on him and how he is SO AWESOME. Thanks.]