Sister of missing dancer fears, hopes, searches

The first is the Celeste everyone gets to see — everyone, across the country, on the TV news. This is the Celeste that is determined to find her sister, the one who is posting fliers and making nice with the reporters and hugging strangers who found her on Facebook. This is the one who smiles.

The other Celeste is the one no one gets to see. She is the woman who sleeps in her missing sister’s house at night, the one who left her kids and skipped Christmas, the one who goes into her missing sister’s room and feels her heart breaking just a little bit more than it is already broken. This is the one whose bottom lip quivers just a little when she answers questions.

She will not admit that Celeste Number Two exists.

So, the fliers.

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There will be a moment, later on, when all of this will end. Celeste Flores-Narvaez will be reunited with her little sister, Debbie the Showgirl, as she has become known, or she will say goodbye to her forever.

Celeste knows that as the days go by, one of those possibilities becomes more likely than the other.

"I have to believe it, whether I feel it or not, I have to believe it," she says. She puts her hand on her heart when she says this, the lip quivering.

She has just come from the Dollar Tree in North Las Vegas with rolls of tape. She passes the tape out in the parking lot. A handful of volunteers, a pack of roaming children, a man who is just passing by.

"Hey, you got any extra? I can put some up at the 7-Eleven, some other stores," the man says, and over she hands the tape and the fliers.

She has piles of fliers. Debbie’s picture, a description, the phone numbers for the police.

■ ■ ■

Debbie and Celeste grew up first in Puerto Rico. They moved to Baltimore when Debbie was 7 and Celeste was 8. They’ve always been close.

They look like sisters, smooth brown skin, long, dark, straight hair, full lips and dark brown eyes. Beautiful young women.

Celeste eventually moved to Atlanta, where she works as a customer service supervisor for a finance company.

Debbie grew up active. Dancing, cheerleading, gymnastics, that sort of thing. She got an education in finance, her sister says, but found that she could not resist the call of Las Vegas. Debbie needed to dance.

She came in 2008. She danced, in nightclubs first, and then in "Fantasy," an adult-themed show at the Luxor on the Strip. To call her a showgirl is a stretch, though it sounds great on the TV.

She reported a fight with her ex-boyfriend, Jason Omar Griffith, in October. He was charged with domestic violence, and the case is still pending. The police report says Debbie told police she was she was pregnant with Griffith’s child.

In early December, Debbie sent a text message to her mom, for who-knows-what reason, saying that if anything ever happened, Griffith was her emergency contact.

And then, Dec. 13, Debbie didn’t show up for work. Her car was found in a bad neighborhood with the license plates removed.

Debbie had disappeared.

■ ■ ■

"Anybody want sound bites?"

An enthusiastic freelance TV reporter calls the media gaggle over. "OK, let’s do this."

The media outnumber the volunteers outside the Dollar Tree, but that’s OK with Celeste. She just wants to get her sister’s picture out there. In the store windows, in the neighborhood where she was last seen, on the TV news.

She answers the same questions she has answered before.

Why is she here today?

To pass out fliers.

Why in this area?

Because this is near where Debbie was last seen.

What have the police told you?

There’s not much new to say.

What’s it been like for you these last few days?

"Torture. Um. Agonizing, I guess. Impatient. Aggravating. Wishing that, ah, somebody would hand over the information they know."

Somebody, she says, knows something.

She pastes fliers around the neighborhood.

■ ■ ■

Celeste got to Las Vegas on Dec. 17. She has worked with the police, generated tons of publicity. She created a Facebook page and a blog where she interacts with well-wishers and keeps folks up to date on what she’s doing next. She has been on the major network news shows. She lets reporters follow her around, ask her anything. She’s trying to raise money so she can post a reward.

Through it all, she smiles.

"Until I get a dreadful phone call that, God forbid, something happened to her," she says, "I have to keep going."

She talked to her kids on Christmas. They’re in Atlanta, with her mom. Celeste is single, has two boys, Izeyah, 12, and Mycah, 1. She says she misses them. They’re her first priority.

But so is her sister.

"Any little thing that can help find her," she says.

■ ■ ■

She hugs a woman she has never met, except online. She hands her a bundle of fliers, some tape.

Celeste is wearing a gray sweat suit, white tennis shoes and a lined coat to shield her from the cold. She says she has lost weight in the last few weeks. She hasn’t had time to eat much.

Her Bluetooth earpiece stays in all the time. She has given her cell phone number out freely. You never know who’s going to call.

She has been getting weird phone calls from a blocked phone number, but no one talks. She is sure there is someone listening on the other end. She’s going to talk to the police about it.

She tells the cameras that this is your problem too, her missing sister. This is your community, she says, you should care.

"We just want to find my sister and find her justice, as well," she says.

She gave the police a DNA sample, just in case.

■ ■ ■

She was hoping she would find Debbie by Christmas. That would be her gift. She got a scare Dec. 23 when a burned up body was found at Lake Mead. But that was not Debbie.

She says that sometimes, and she knows this is a terrible thing to say, a terrible thing to even think, but sometimes, in her darkest moments, she wonders what it would have been like had the phone call that told her Debbie was missing had told her something else instead. Something worse.

Because worse is at least an answer.

Contact reporter Richard Lake at rlake@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0307.