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She was Shy Shy to everyone who knew her, full name Shy’Kemmia Pate. The day was September 4, 1998. Shy Shy was only 8. She had just started third grade.
The little town she lived in was Unadilla, Georgia, and that Friday, a southern summer wasn’t close to ending. It would be 90 degrees and muggy.
That morning, Shy Shy’s mom, Veronica, walked her to school. Unadilla Elementary was just a couple of blocks away and when they got there, Veronica says she told her youngest daughter what she always had.
Veronica Pate: “I love her, and, ‘Have a good day,’ and, ‘I’ll see you when I got home.’”
For Veronica, that moment remains the dividing line between life before and after, because when she got home that night, Shy Shy wasn’t there, and that’s when the world as Veronica had known it changed.
And it still hasn’t changed back.
Veronica Pate: “It’s a storm that never stops storming in your life.”
What Veronica calls the storm has been raging for more than 25 years.
Josh Mankiewicz: “Has there been a day when you didn’t wake up and think about where your daughter might be?”
Veronica Pate: “I think about that every day and every night.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “It’s about the worst thing a parent can go through.”
Veronica Pate: “It is.”
Twenty-six birthdays have gone by since Shy Shy vanished. Today, she would be 34, and Veronica hasn’t given up on finding her.
I’m Josh Mankiewicz and this is Dateline: Missing in America. This episode is “The Night Shy Shy Disappeared.”
We first covered her story in November 2023, when Natalie Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, drew our attention to it.
Natalie has a lot to say about this case.
Natalie Wilson: “We just need one person to come forward with information that could help find her. We have seen miracles happen.”
Veronica has hoped for that miracle every day.
Veronica Pate: “And you just pray and ask God to teach you how to put one foot in front of the other, hold your head up, and smile. Even when you can’t smile, you still smile.”
Please listen closely because you or someone you know might have information that could help Shy Shy’s family find the answers they’ve been searching for.
In Shy Shy’s third-grade school photo, her long braids are pulled to one side and tied with a bow. She beams at the camera with bright eyes and a wide smile. She is the picture of 8-year-old adorableness. Her mom, Veronica, says Shy Shy was a happy child who had a lot of fans, and she loved them back.
Veronica Pate: “Everybody loved her. She loved her school. She loved her pediatrician because she took good care of her.”
Shy Shy’s pediatrician had an outsized role in her young life because chronic asthma and kidney disease often kept her out of school.
Josh Mankiewicz: “That’s a lot for a little girl to have to go through.”
Veronica Pate: “It is.”
Veronica says her daughter never fell behind in her schoolwork.
Veronica Pate: “She was very smart.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “You must have been very proud of her.”
Veronica Pate: “I am -- and I was.”
For Shy Shy and her classmates, Labor Day weekend 1998 kicked off that Friday at 3:30, when school got out. Shy Shy had big plans that night. She was going to a football game at the high school in nearby Vienna, Georgia.
LaSwanda Hickey: “The plan was for me to bring her with me to the game. So, yeah. She was excited about going.”
That’s LaSwanda Hickey, Shy Shy’s sister. She was 17 at the time, with three younger siblings, including Shy Shy -- the baby. Through the eyes of teenage LaSwanda, Shy was a typical little sister.
Laswanda Hickey: “Pesty, um, aggravating, you know? And then there's also the side that, you know, uh, looks up to you and wants to be like you and want to go where you go and do what you do.”
LaSwanda was in junior ROTC then and part of the color guard that brought out the flags at football games. That afternoon she decided to take a nap to rest up before the game. Before she dozed off, she pulled a big sister move.
Laswanda Hickey: “I may have said to her, you know, that I wasn't going to take her. I'm pretty sure I said, you know, ‘You ain't going,’ And, you know --. But it was jokes.”
Shy Shy went outside to play and when LaSwanda woke up around six o’clock, she went to put gas in the car. As she drove, she saw Shy Shy on a neighbor’s front porch.
LaSwanda Hickey: “I want to say she tried to flag me down. I'm not 100 percent sure if she tried to stop me or not, but I know I didn't stop. I kept going, and I got gas and when I came back around to the house where I saw her on the porch to pick her up, they say she had left walking up the street.”
LaSwanda drove up the street looking for Shy Shy but didn’t see her, so she called her mom, Veronica, who wasn’t home yet.
LaSwanda Hickey: “And I had to be at the game by 7:30 p.m. and so she said, ‘Well, it's fine,’ you know, ‘She's probably at somebody's house, a friend's house,’ And, you know, ‘We'll get her,’ you know, ‘when we come back.’”
In 1998, Unadilla’s population barely topped 1,600, and Crumpler Avenue, where Shy Shy lived, was the kind of neighborhood where everyone knew everyone. Veronica and LaSwanda say it wasn’t unusual for kids to end up at a neighbor’s house playing with friends or even cousins.
Josh Mankiewicz: “You ever worry about her going outside in that neighborhood?”
Veronica Pate: “No, I didn't.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “People knew her. She knew them.”
Veronica Pate: “She knew them. Everybody knew everybody. And, you know, our kids be out riding their bicycles, skating, and everything.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “And you thought she was safe?”
Veronica pate: “Yes.”
Veronica recalls getting home around 7:45 or so, and when Shy Shy wasn’t there, she says, at first, she wasn’t that worried. She figured her daughter was at a friend’s house. So she started making calls, but Shy Shy didn’t turn up. And then, when LaSwanda came home after the game and there was still no sign of her little sister, that’s when it became clear something was seriously wrong.
Josh Mankiewicz: “You call the police.”
Veronica Pate: “Yes.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Which is what any parent would do in that situation.”
Veronica Pate: Mm-hmm.
Josh Mankiewicz: “And the police say, ‘We have to wait 24 hours’?”
Veronica Pate: “Yes.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “She’s --. I'm guessing you said to them, ‘She's 8 years old. Why do we have to wait 24 hours?’”
Veronica pate: “Yes.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “What'd they say?”
Veronica Pate: “He -- he didn't -- he didn't ever say anything.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “How could they not jump to attention when an 8-year-old kid is missing?”
Veronica Pate: “They didn't.”
Veronica says it fell to Shy Shy’s family and their neighbors to search in the dark, up and down the street, for their little girl.
Veronica Pate: “We was up all night, and it was people sleeping out on my porch that night. I had a lot of people show up, but the police never show up till the next day, and it was probably after lunchtime by the time they came.”
You may already know what I’m about to tell you because it’s mentioned so often in news stories.
After 24 hours, the odds of finding an abducted child alive are slim and dropping.
As night turned to dawn in Unadilla, those critical hours were slipping away.
When investigator Randy Lamberth walked into the Dooly County Sheriff’s Office on Saturday morning, Shy Shy Pate had already been missing nearly 14 hours.
Randy Lamberth: “Our dispatch actually asked me if we found the little girl up in Unadilla and when I said, ‘What little girl?’ that's when we found out about it. This was roughly mid-morning the next day.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “So, you lost a lot of time right there.”
Randy Lamberth: “Yes, sir.”
In 1998, the Dooly County Sheriff’s Office was one of two law enforcement agencies serving Unadilla, Georgia. Veronica had called the Unadilla Police Department the night before. It was one of their officers who told her he had to wait 24 hours before entering Shy Shy’s name into the missing persons database. Now, the sheriff’s office was playing catch-up.
They brought in state, local, and federal agencies to help. The search for Shy Shy started at Veronica’s house and continued up and down Crumpler Avenue.
Randy Lamberth: “They went from house to house, uh, doing consent searches, buildings, anywhere that, uh, a child could possibly be. These neighbors opened their houses to the officers and let them come through.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “And nobody found her.”
Randy Lamberth: “No, sir. They did not.”
Several people told investigators they’d seen Shy Shy on Friday evening. One neighbor said she’d eaten a hot dog at her house. Others saw Shy Shy, alone, outside.
Randy Lamberth: “We had pinpointed the location she was last seen -- at the intersection of Crumpler Avenue and West Street. She was last seen roughly -- 8:30, 8:35.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “And this is right in front of her house, right where she lived.”
Randy Lamberth: “It's about a half a block from where she lives at.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “This a dangerous area, scary area?”
Randy Lamberth: “There was a club across the street from where she lived at. So, a dangerous area? You could classify it as that with the drug traffic and, uh, other crimes that took place at the club area.”
The club he’s talking about was called Roxie’s -- a family-owned business that wore a lot of hats: nightclub, pool parlor, and mom-and-pop store. Locals of all backgrounds and ages hung out there or just stopped by for a snack. Shy Shy and her siblings were regular customers.
LaSwanda Hickey: “We would always go to the store part, um, even when we were little kids and they sold, you know, things for kids, candy, chips, pickles, pig feet, you know, that kind of stuff.”
Deputy Lamberth and other investigators suspected Shy Shy would not have left with just anyone, that she was taken by someone she knew and probably trusted. Strangers stood out in Unadilla, and Lamberth says the drug dealers outside Roxie’s were always on the lookout for anyone they didn’t know who might be an undercover cop. He also says even they cooperated with deputies looking for Shy Shy.
Randy Lamberth: “They told us that there was an older, uh, white male came into the area, gave us a vehicle description. Uh, from there, we located him, identified him, and he was actually looking for a female who lived in the area there, uh, that has cleaned his house before. That’s the only stranger that we was able to identify.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “And you kind of ruled him out.”
Randy Lamberth: “That is correct, sir.”
Aerial and ground searches that weekend covered a five-mile radius around Crumpler Avenue and Roxie’s. Dogs and four-wheelers scoured fields and woods.
The search area was later expanded by another five miles, but there was still no trace of Shy Shy.
If investigators were right and Shy Shy was taken by a familiar face, that also meant her abductor might be hiding in plain sight.
Who that was, of course, remained a mystery.
Investigators had persons of interest on their radar, but as weeks stretched into months, they seemed no closer to finding the little girl.
Randy Lamberth: “’Beam me up, Scotty.’ Uh, it's -- it's -- basically, that's almost like what happened.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “One second, she's there, one second, she's gone.”
Randy Lamberth: “Correct.”
At the Pate house on Crumpler Avenue, there was no escaping Shy Shy’s absence. LaSwanda, Shy Shy’s big sister, says their mom, Veronica, could barely function.
LaSwanda Hickey: “I remember my mom crying a lot, sitting, you know, by the door, like, sleeping by the door.
Not locking the door, waiting for her to come back.”
LaSwanda had just started her senior year of high school. Her brother was a freshman, her sister in middle school. Neighbors stepped in to keep the household running.
LaSwanda Hickey: “You know, help out at the house, cook for us because she was kind of, in a way, debilitated.
You know, she really kind of wasn't herself for a long time.”
Veronica told me she slept by that unlocked front door for two years.
Josh Mankiewicz: “Because you thought maybe your daughter was gonna walk back in?”
Veronica Pate: “Walk back in the door, mm-hmm.”
All that time LaSwanda couldn’t help but blame herself for Shy Shy’s disappearance.
LaSwanda Hickey: “I felt like had I just stopped when I saw her on the porch, then she would have been with me, instead of going back after I got gas. You know, so had I stopped when I saw her, then maybe none of this would have ever happened.”
Investigator Lamberth says in the year after Shy Shy went missing, dozens of tips came in from across the country. The FBI checked the out-of-state leads, but with each passing year, there were fewer tips to chase. Then, three years after Shy Shy’s disappearance, the town of Unadilla was in the headlines, when a string of sexual assaults rattled the community. The victims were young girls -- three of them raped, including a 12-year-old.
In July 2002, 20-year-old Quentin Kendrick, one of Shy Shy’s neighbors, pleaded guilty to 16 criminal charges, including multiple counts of rape and kidnapping in those attacks. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Quentin Kendrick’s name was already in Randy Lamberth’s files. He was one of the people who told police he’d seen Shy Shy shortly before her disappearance.
Randy Lamberth: “In fact, he was one of the ones that last saw her.”
Kendrick and Shy Shy’s family lived about 200 yards apart. In the months after Shy Shy disappeared, investigators searched an abandoned well next to Kendricks’ property.
After his arrest on the rape charges, they went back and did a more thorough search of that well. They did not find any human remains.
Josh Mankiewicz: “I mean, he, uh, he's somebody that's gonna -- that's gonna get on police radar. Somebody with that -- with that situation.”
Randy Lamberth: “That's true. We have another, uh, person of interest, uh, in the case as well, uh, who was the first person of interest. Quentin was not at the time. This other person he – he was really hitting the radar heavy, uh, and still does, so --.
And nothing has actually been ruled out on either one of them.”
Investigator Lamberth won’t say who the other person of person of interest is, or when Quentin Kendrick became a person of interest.
What’s good about that is that it suggests some real progress.
Josh Mankiewicz: “That, to me, says you think maybe this is close enough for you to either make an arrest or maybe learn where she is.”
Randy Lamberth: “That's what we're hoping. Uh, we -- we're hoping that we can continue to develop enough that, uh, we can push and maybe define where Shy Shy may be located.”
After his arrest on those rape charges, Quentin Kendrick told The Macon Telegraph he had nothing to do with Shy Shy’s disappearance.
Veronica grew up with his mother, his aunts and his uncles -- and she says Quentin played basketball in the street with her son.
Josh Mankiewicz: “You never worried about him being around Shy?”
Veronica Pate: “No. I mean, her brother and him was friends, you know, but that was it.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “You never saw him show any interest in Shy?”
Veronica Pate: “No, not even her sister. She was 12 and the other sister was 17.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Sounds like you think he's not involved?”
Veronica Pate: “No, I don't think he's involved.”
In 2008, Veronica moved away from Crumpler Avenue to another city,16 miles away. In the math of the missing, she’d survived a decade of missed school pictures.
Instead, she watched her daughter grow up in age-progressed photos created by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
In an image showing what Shy Shy might have looked like as a 16-year-old, the braids she wore in third grade are gone.
Her hair is straightened. She still flashes that big smile.
There were also some other photos -- ones that popped up on Facebook.
And they were about to send investigators racing across three states on a stealth mission.
Randy Lamberth: “The young lady, uh, once we introduced ourselves, she was shocked.”
In January 2012, deputies at the Dooly County Sheriff’s Office got a call -- one that looked like it could be their lucky break.
A tipster pointed them to photos of a young woman that had been posted on Facebook.
The tipster believed the woman, who lived in Michigan, was Shy Shy Pate.
Investigator Randy Lamberth looked at the photos and saw enough of a resemblance to pursue that lead.
Josh Mankiewicz: “So you get in the car, and off you go to Detroit?
Randy Lamberth: “That is correct.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “How long a drive is that?”
Randy Lamberth: “It was about, uh, 12, 12 and a half hours.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “So that says to me that you're taking this pretty seriously.
You think there's at least a good chance that maybe you're finally gonna find Shy Shy.”
Randy Lamberth: “That is -- that is correct.”
In the 13-plus years he’d been working Shy Shy‘s case, Lamberth had checked out dozens of tips without success. He hadn’t told Veronica about this one because he didn’t want to raise any false hopes. Plus, the three law enforcement officers wanted to protect the element of surprise.
And they did pull off the surprise. Rotando Freeman was at work when she received a call she didn’t expect, asking her to come to a police department just outside Detroit.
Rotando is Veronica’s sister and thus, Shy Shy’s aunt.
She was the one who’d posted those photos on Facebook, and she told the road-weary cops it wasn’t Shy Shy in those photos. It was another member of the family.
Rotando Freeman: “She's my little cousin. Me and her mother is first cousins.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “So she does look kinda like Shy.”
Rotando Freeman: “Yes.”
Deputy Lamberth says they talked with the girl in the Facebook photos and confirmed she wasn’t Shy Shy. It turned out to be all a big misunderstanding, but Rotando says she was glad the investigators came all that way.
Rotando Freeman: When I seen them, and when they told me why they was there, I -- like, it gave me the strength to know that they’re still looking.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “It made you feel better to know that they were still looking, even though the reason that they were there turned out to be not legitimate.”
Rotando Feeman: “Correct.”
By 2016, Rotando had moved from Michigan back to Georgia, and she decided to organize a 5K walk to bring attention to Shy Shy’s case and other missing children in the state. The route started in front of Veronica’s old house and ended near the intersection where Shy Shy was last seen.
Rotando even had T-shirts made up with Shy Shy’s third-grade school photo on the front. Randy Lamberth came to the walk. By then, he’d been working the case for nearly two decades.
Josh Mankiewicz: “You talk about Shy Shy as being ‘my little girl,’ in your words.”
Randy Lamberth: “You're right.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Why is that?”
Randy Lamberth: “Um --.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Why isn't this just another case?”
Randy Lamberth: “I mean, she's a child. A child's gonna touch everybody. And it's something that I would like to, one day, to be able to, you know, bring her home.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “This long ago stopped being just another case to you. Didn't it, Randy?”
Randy Lamberth: “That is correct. That is correct.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “You'd like to close this.”
Randy Lamberth: “Yes.”
For Shy Shy's family, the searching never really stops.
Rotando Freeman: “It's like every time you go somewhere, you’re, like, constantly, like, looking for her, because you don't know. And the fact that we don't know exactly what she would look like today. We don't know if we done pass her in the store. Has she passed us and not knowing who we were? And just not knowing is the hardest thing.”
There’s another unknown that still haunts them. Could Shy Shy’s abductor be someone they might still see at the grocery store?
Josh Mankiewicz: “If Shy knew and trusted that person, you probably also knew and trusted that person.”
Rotando Freeman: “Knew and trusted that person, correct.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “What’s it like to know that you probably know the murderer, or the abductor, or the person that’s had her all these years?”
Rotando Freeman: “You can’t even trust people these days because you don’t — you don’t know — you don’t know if the person looking at your face, smiling at you and they know where Shy at, or they know who took her, or somebody in their family took her. We don’t know. It’s hard.”
The endless search for answers would lead the family in all kinds of directions.
In 2022, Shy’s Shy’s mom, Veronica, got a Facebook friend request that she ignored, at first.
Her grandson did accept it -- and that led to a phone call between Veronica and a woman in Missouri.
And in that first phone call, the woman dropped a bombshell.
Josh Mankiewicz: “She said she was Shy.”
Veronica Pate: “Yes. She said she was Shy.”
There was more. The caller told Veronica she’d been abducted, forced to use another name, and had been abused by the people who raised her. Veronica says the woman didn’t ask for money, but instead had a message for the family.
Veronica Pate: “She said, um, ‘If we never see each other again, I just want you to know that I ain't dead.’ And she said, ‘And I just wanna ease the pain that's in your heart.’”
Josh Mankiewicz: “And you believed that. At least right then, you did.”
Veronica Pate: “I did. I still believe it to today. I don't have a way of proving it.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “You believe her 'cause you wanted to believe her 'cause this is the phone call you always wanted to get?”
Veronica Pate: “I actually believed in her because it was like when I heard the voice on the phone, it's like the pain -- like my -- my heart just got relieved.”
So who did the caller say had kidnapped her back in 1998? According to Veronica, the woman said she’d blocked out those traumatic details.
Investigators spoke to local authorities in Missouri and interviewed the woman themselves.
Randy Lamberth: “We ended up, uh, talking with the young lady, as well, but she was not giving us answers that could confirm anything.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “You mean things you've held back to weed out imposters?”
Randy Lamberth: “That -- that is correct.”
They also had her submit to a DNA test.
Randy Lamberth: “And that basically came back negative.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “You're confident that was her DNA. I mean, she swabbed it in the presence of somebody else?”
Randy Lamberth: “Uh, the investigator there from, uh, Missouri, at her home, is the one actually obtained the swabbings.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Right. So -- so it's not her?”
Randy Lamberth: “That is correct.”
Veronica says she doesn’t trust the swab test and would like to see a blood test done. She also says that caller knew things that only Shy Shy would know, because they’re not public.
At one point, she and other family members did a video call with the woman.
Josh Mankiewicz: “When you see her on the video call, do you think that's her? You think that's Shy?”
Veronica Pate: “I felt like it was, yeah. I felt it and I -- I -- I could believe it was.”
Shy Shy’s sister LaSwanda is not convinced. Not without solid proof.
LaSwanda Hickey: “You know, my mom was very excited about it. She wants it to be her. So I had to kind of, like, explain to my mom that she need to be careful, because you never know what people are up to.”
Deputy Lamberth told us the woman later recanted some of her claims and stopped answering calls.
Natalie Wilson from the Black and Missing Foundation says her organization is familiar with scams targeting families of the missing.
Natalie Wilson: “We are seeing an increase, or an uptick, in individuals or, I'm assuming, organizations that are taking advantage of families. Um, you know, reaching out to them saying, “I know where your loved one is.’ You know, ‘You need to pay a ransom.’ They are also, um, you know, acting as though they are investigators. And they're telling these families, you know, ‘I can hook you up with someone that can give you a loan for $10,000 and pay me that $10,000 and I’ll help you find your missing loved ones.’”
Natalie drew our attention to Shy Shy’s story after she met with Veronica in the summer of 2023.
Natalie Wilson: “My heart bleeds for Veronica. She wants to just find her daughter, and she's holding on to hope. That was her baby, I mean, Shy is the baby in the family. And when I talk to Veronica, she blames herself for what happened.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “I think that Veronica does feel some -- some guilt about this, which I think she absolutely should not feel. I don't think she did anything wrong. Uh, but that is normal, isn't it?”
Natalie Wilson: “Mm-hmm.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “For families to feel that they -- they should have been more vigilant, they should have paid more attention when, in fact, they really, actually, this was done to them, not by them.”
Natalie Wilson: “Absolutely. You know, families -- what do they call it? The Monday morning quarterback. And, ‘I should have done this differently,’ um, you know, ‘to protect my loved one.’ But she, um, needs to hold her head up high, because she continues to pound the pavement to find her daughter and to keep her, you know, her disappearance in the forefront.”
More than 25 years have passed since Shy Shy Pate vanished in the dark and Randy Lamberth caught her case --14 hours late.
Josh Mankiewicz: “There's no way to know this for sure but I feel like if Shy had been from a rich family, uh, that maybe was a different color, um, this might have been all hands-on deck a lot sooner.”
Natalie Wilson: “You know, I agree with you. And what we are finding as we work with families is that oftentimes race, your zip code, your economic status, even your education, they are, many times, barriers to law enforcement resources, media coverage, and community engagement. And that is something that we are trying to change the narrative -- that these are our missing mothers, our fathers, our children.
Today, Veronica has nine grandchildren. They call her Nana.
Veronica Pate: “And the hardest part is when they turn 8 years old, I be praying to ask God and let them get past 8. Once they get past 8, feellike a little weight lift off of my heart.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Veronica, you think you're gonna see Shy again one day?”
Veronica Pate: “I believe in my heart that I will.”
LaSwanda is now a mom with three children of her own. She tells them about the aunt they have never met, her baby sister. And she told us she has a message for Shy Shy.
LaSwanda Hickey: “If she's listening or if she hears this story, I would want her to know and understand that we had -- we had no idea where to go, and we still don't. We still love her. We miss her tremendously. And we never gave up hope.”
Here’s where you can help:
Shy Shy’s full name is Shy’Kemmia Shy’rezz Pate. She would be 34 years old today.
You can view age-progressed photos of her on our website.
She was last seen wearing a neon green Atlanta Braves jersey with red lettering, Levi’s jeans, and she had a leg brace. She had several medical conditions including asthma.
Anyone with information about Shy’Kemmia’s disappearance is asked to call the Dooly County Sheriff’s Office at 229-645-0920 or the Georgia Bureau of Investigation at 478-987-4545.
To learn more about other people we’ve covered In our “Missing in America” series — go to DatelineMissingInAmerica.com.
There, you’ll be able to submit cases you think we should cover in the future.