Missing boy look-alikes get stares, and parents explain

PORTLAND – Talin Jacobs has a wide, toothy grin. His brown hair is cut short. He’s on the small side for his age.

And here’s something else his mom, Tarin Elliott, wants you to know about her 9-year-old boy: He is not Kyron Horman.

Since Kyron went missing June 4, Elliott’s family has been approached repeatedly by well-meaning strangers who’ve mistaken Talin for Kyron. The Vancouver family has been trailed in stores by shoppers and questioned by security guards. Strangers stare at Talin. Once, someone jotted down the license plate on the family car and reported it to authorities.

Last week, in a Vancouver, Wash., grocery store, a couple of women stopped cold and, in hushed tones, wondered whether Talin was the missing Skyline School second-grader. They studied Talin’s face long enough to make the boy uncomfortable, his mom said.

“It’s not Kyron,” Elliott told the women, who hastily apologized for any trouble they’d caused.

And Talin isn’t the only area boy to be confused with Kyron. The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office has had four reports of children who resemble the missing boy, including one last week involving a woman and a boy spotted boarding a MAX train bound for Portland International Airport.

Portland police and airport authorities caught up with the woman on a PDX concourse and determined the child wasn’t Kyron, said Lt. Mary Lindstrand, a sheriff’s office spokeswoman.

“That wasn’t the first time she’d been stopped,” Lindstrand said.

Lindstrand said one woman whose son resembles Kyron took the boy to the Wall of Hope, a tribute to Kyron outside Skyline School, to show him why strangers were staring at him. The mother, Lindstrand said, wanted him to understand what had happened to Kyron.

Lindstrand said she hopes the families of Kyron look-alikes understand if they’re approached by police.

“It’s safer to ask than not to ask,” she said. “Better safe than sorry.”

When Paula Vandewalle, of Hillsboro, saw Kyron’s photograph for the first time, she instantly spotted a resemblance to her two young grandsons.

She worried that her 9-year-old grandson, who lives in the Midwest, might be approached during his summer visit to Oregon.

“We thought, ‘We sure hope that it gets resolved because we don’t want anyone mistaking him for Kyron,’ ” Vandewalle said.

A garage sale regular, Vandewalle often takes her 5-year-old grandson along.

“I have had lots of people ask, ‘What’s your name and where do you live?’

“This one gentleman at a garage sale in Lake Oswego was asking him a lot of questions,” she said. Another woman who’d been eyeing Vandewalle’s grandson seemed relieved when she heard the boy refer to Vandewalle as “grandma.”

Vandewalle said she’s not unsettled by the attention. Kyron’s picture, after all, is everywhere.

“Anybody who resembles him might get a second glance,” Vandewalle said. “I think that’s fine. I know if that was my grandson missing, I would want everyone’s eyes to be looking.”

Don Nys was so alarmed by his son’s resemblance to Kyron that he started carrying his son’s school identification card in his wallet in case he was confronted by authorities.

The Hillsboro man said he and his son were approached at a Lincoln City Starbucks by strangers who thought 9-year-old Hayden looked a lot like Kyron.

“When you go into public, you get paranoid,” Nys said. “Are they thinking I have a missing child with me?”

Elliott said her husband and Talin were at a Vancouver Walmart recently and were followed into the men’s room. The guard washed his hands while Talin was in a stall.

“Is that your boy?” the man asked Talin’s father, Marcus Elliott.

“Yes,” said Elliott. “That’s my boy. It’s not (Kyron).”

The similarities between their son and the missing boy have given the Elliotts a personal connection to Kyron. Elliott often wears a pin with Kyron’s picture on it. Kyron’s smiling face is her Facebook profile picture. Her son has a T-shirt with Kyron’s image on it.

Elliott said she’s not bothered by the second glances and the whispers from strangers.

“I am not upset,” she said. “At least I know everybody out there is keeping an eye out for this little boy. Anybody can stop me.”