BY DANIEL VICTOR
Of The Patriot-News
Hauling a duffel bag full of clothes, a 14-year-old runaway from Steelton boarded a Greyhound bus from Harrisburg to New York City on Friday.
He didn’t have the paperwork that Greyhound requires for children traveling alone. Police and his mother said he was never asked for identification.
But he rode the bus out of town anyway, despite Greyhound’s corporate policy that bars unaccompanied children younger than 15 without forms signed by parents or guardians.
His mother, Doris Borelli, caught on to his plan, and police in Harrisburg and Upper Merion Twp. worked together to get him off the bus near King of Prussia. Borelli then drove to the Upper Merion police building for a tearful reunion. She said her son is undergoing counseling.
But it shouldn’t have gotten that far, she said, outraged that no one at Greyhound asked how old he was.
“He can’t get a pack of cigarettes, but he can get on a bus to New York City?” she asked.
Greyhound spokesman Timothy Stokes said he did not have information about the Harrisburg incident. A manager at the Harrisburg bus terminal did not return phone calls seeking comment.
According to Greyhound policy, an unaccompanied child 8 to 14 must have a form signed by a parent or guardian that lists the name and contact information of the adult meeting the child at the destination. That adult must show ID to pick up the child.
But Stokes said that if the ticket agent doesn’t determine a child’s age, he or she can proceed as any adult. While Greyhound has the restriction for youths, its agents are not required to check IDs to verify age.
“We would not ask for ID unless the ticket agent believed they were under the age of 15,” Stokes said. “It’s up to the ticket agent, given the training that they’ve gone through.”
Bieber Trailways, a smaller bus company, has the same policy as Greyhound, agency sales manager Marcy Simpson said. “Greyhound usually sets the industry standards, and we follow along,” she said.
She said the policy creates a problem for ticket agents, who must decide whether to ask for ID.
“If a young teenager would walk to your ticket counter, it really is a judgment call as to whether you suspect she’s 18 or 14,” she said.
Those who buy train tickets at Amtrak, even adults, are required to show identification. Though specific policies differ by airline, all passengers must show ID when flying.
“The situation that happened with the bus is not going to happen with an airplane,” said Scott Miller, a spokesman for Harrisburg International Airport.
Nancy McBride, the national safety director for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said such incidents are rare, but she would favor a policy that would card anyone under 18.
She said Greyhound’s policy for unaccompanied minors is strong, and she praised the company’s program that gives free bus rides to runaways returning home, but not mandating identification for child passengers “seems to be a pretty big gap to me,” she said.
“If we’re not checking the ID of these teenagers or adolescents, then the whole thing falls apart,” she said.
McBride said the company policy is not governed by state or federal law, but it could be. In Illinois, unaccompanied children younger than 17 are not allowed to travel, even with parental permission, she said.
If not for a knot in Borelli’s stomach at work that day, she fears she might have lost her son forever.
She said she had that motherly sense that something was wrong, so she left work early. Her son’s drawers, usually overflowing with clothes, had been emptied. The bottle of cologne she saw on his bed that morning was gone.
She checked the phone log and saw her son had called a taxi company. The taxi driver told her he had taken him to the bus station.
The Greyhound workers remembered her son and helped police identify his destination, she said. Harrisburg police then connected with Upper Merion police, who dispatched an officer to pick up the teen at the bus station.
Borelli said she believes he was chasing a girl who moved away three years ago and lives in Massachusetts. She doesn’t know what his plan was after he made it to New York, but she fears she would have lost him forever had he made it there.
“I was happy, I was elated that he was OK,” she said. “But I was angry it even made it to that point.”