By David Harry

Staff Writer

Lorraine Ela said she met a lot of nice people in New York last Saturday as she helped alert them about her missing daughter.

Yet after 350 posters with Megan Waterman’s face and description and 50 smaller cards attached to balloons were distributed in Hauppage, the Long Island town where she was last seen, the 22-year-old Scarborough woman remains missing.

“We love her, we miss her and we want her home,” Ela said. Her daughter was last seen and heard from June 5 and 6 at a Holiday Inn Express.

Led by Cynthia Caron, the executive director of Londonderry, N.H.-based LostNMissing, Ela and other family members spoke to shoppers outside a grocery store near the hotel and approached local business owners to hang posters of Waterman.

The efforts on Long Island came after a candlelight vigil in Portland on June 25 and distribution of posters and balloons at the Scarborough Wal-Mart the next morning.

The mother of a 3-year-old daughter, Waterman called home three times a day when she visited Long Island. Her last call came the evening of June 5, Ela said. Police said Waterman was last seen early on June 6. Scarborough Police Detective Don Blatchford who heads the missing persons investigation, said there are no developments in the case this week.

Caron, established the nonprofit LostNMissing about a year ago after helping families of missing persons by creating posters for several years. She said her work began because she saw too much indifference to notices about missing people posted in local stores and wanted to help.

She said the response on Long Island was very encouraging.

“The people there were absolutely phenomenal,” she said.

Volunteers on Long Island included Sonia Ossorio, executive director of the Brooklyn chapter of the National Organization for Women, Caron said.

Getting pictures of Waterman and her information circulated serves several purposes, Caron said.

“There is always somebody who knows something somewhere,” Caron said in an interview before the candlelight vigil in Congress Square in Portland.

Making and distributing posters also allows Waterman’s family to help in the search and alleviates feelings of helplessness, Caron said.

She said she tries to discourage a family from searching for a missing loved one if the missing person is not an adult affected by dementia because an independent search might hamper police investigations or contaminate evidence.

Having Ela and other family members travel to Long Island helped give people a personal insight into the disappearance, Caron said.

“It makes a difference to say ‘this is Megan’s mother,’” she said.

A man Ela called Waterman’s boyfriend, 20-year-old Akeem Cruz, was due in Portland District Court Thursday, after the Leader deadline, to answer to charges of driving without a license. Blatchford said Cruz is a person of interest in the missing person case.

Cruz had been sought on a bench warrant for failure to appear in court last month, but the warrant was removed when a new court date was set, according to a court clerk.

He was also charged with drug trafficking by South Portland police in May and criminal threatening charges by Portland police last month, but has not been indicted. Tamara Getchell, spokesman for the Cumberland County District Attorney’s office, had no information about pending cases against Cruz.

Caron and police said Waterman and Cruz frequently visited Long Island because she was working as an escort and had placed Internet ads for her services.

Waterman is 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighs about 145 pounds, has a birthmark inside her left forearm and a mole on the right side of her face. Police said she has brown or bleached blonde hair, and tattoos on her back and left forearm.

The tattoo on Waterman’s upper left arm says “Liette,” the one on her lower left arm is the Capricorn horoscope sign and she has a tribal design tattoo with a heart in the center on her lower back.

Anyone with information on Waterman’s whereabouts is asked to call Scarborough police at 883-6361. For more information about Waterman, visit the Facebook “Help Find Megan Waterman” page or www.meganwaterman.com.

Staff writer David Harry can be reached at 282-4337.