It takes a village.
That’s something 88-year-old Myrtle Polk knows well.
Her son, Philip Polk, knows it, too.
He’s been leaning on that very village for the better part of a year — ever since his mother disappeared from her Dallas home in the 1100 block of Indian Creek Trail in June of 2024.
“My mom lives in Dallas — has lived in Dallas for, at this point, probably about 50 or 60 years,” Philip said. “My mom was married to my dad for 58 years, and my dad passed in 2010. And so my mother has been living by herself since 2010.”
In those decades, Myrtle really made her mark and created a valuable community. “Family was really important to her, which is why she kind of curated this village,” Philip said.
“She is, to me, the best mom in the world,” Philip said. He was adopted and grew up an only child. His mother always made sure he felt loved. And he wasn’t the only one. “My mom has a lot of what I call adopted children. Charlotte is one of those,” he said. “People in the community just gravitate toward my mom.”
Charlotte is Charlotte Lester. She refers to Myrtle as her godmother. “No blood relation, just close family relationship,” Charlotte said. She’s known Myrtle for more than 30 years. “She loved doing a crossword puzzle. She loved to shop. She loved to go out to have a nice, you know, lunch with her friends and stuff like that,” Charlotte said. “She’s an ex-educator. She was retired.”
Philip says that over her career as a teacher, his mother taught classes from kindergarten through early elementary school. Myrtle’s faith is also important to her, and she has been a member of the “Exciting” Singing Hills Baptist Church in the Oak Cliff suburb of Dallas for the past 40 years. “So many people in that church refer to her as a mother,” Philip said. “She’s like everybody’s mom.”
“I would see her at church every Sunday,” Charlotte told Dateline. “But we talked every day.”
That’s why Charlotte says she knew something was wrong when she didn’t see Myrtle at church on Sunday, June 9, 2024. After church that day, Charlotte went over to Myrtle’s house to check in on her. But Myrtle wasn’t there. “I said, ‘Well, maybe she went to church with someone else,’” Charlotte remembered. “So I went on home.”
Charlotte called Myrtle later that afternoon. “No answer,” she said. “And I called again. No answer.”
On Monday, June 10, Myrtle’s son Philip — who lives in another state — got a call from one of Myrtle’s neighbors. “And so she’s like, ‘Hey, I just wanted to let you know. It’s Monday, and I, you know, came over to talk to your mom. She’s not here, and I don’t see her car in the garage,’” Philip recounted. Another neighbor drove around the neighborhood looking for Myrtle, but didn’t see her anywhere.
Once it started getting late, Philip’s concern went through the roof. “I’m concerned because my mom’s 88 years old and is never out by herself this late,” he said. So a neighbor arranged to report Myrtle missing that night after speaking with Philip. “We get the missing persons report out Monday evening. I get to town Tuesday morning, and that’s when all of the madness ensues.”
“When I get to my mom’s house on that Tuesday, [there was] already 10 people at my mom’s house,” Philip recalled.
“We just went around the neighborhood,” Charlotte said. “We just really did a search on foot and the cars just driving around.”
“We were doing everything to get the word out, to put something out on Facebook, to get people combing the streets. We were doing everything,” Philip said. A Facebook page was created to push out information about the early search efforts and what was happening in the case. “That social media effort became, I think, kind of the central engine for the search effort.”
Meanwhile, Philip began to learn about Myrtle’s weekend before she vanished. On Friday, June 7, Myrtle drove herself to the bank. Then she was seen midday on Saturday, June 8. “She had a yard man over doing her yard,” Philip said. “And she was sitting out on the stoop in front of her home, talking to her neighbor.”
Philip spoke with his mother on the phone that day, as well.
Later that evening, Myrtle spoke with a friend on the phone. “There was a lady that she would always talk with every night. The lady told me, she said, ‘We talk every night about 9 o’clock,’” Charlotte said, adding that the friend’s name was Stella. “They talked and she said the last thing [Myrtle] said was, ‘Well, Stella, I have to get off the phone. I’m gonna get up and get my clothes and see what I’m gonna wear to church in the morning.’”
“That was the last time that we know that anyone communicated with her -- Saturday night around 9:00 p.m.,” Charlotte said.
No one heard from or saw Myrtle on Sunday, June 9. She was reported missing the next day.
Philip told Dateline his mother has been diagnosed with dementia. “She was fully functional. She’d been living by herself for 14 years,” he said, describing his mother as being in the early stages of the disease, saying she would sometimes just forget that she had already had a conversation with someone. Philip says he tried to get her to move in with his family in Atlanta, but Myrtle didn’t want to leave her home. “Because she has such a strong community and village and had been by herself for 14 years, I felt safe and secure to know that she had people around her,” he explained.
Philip thinks Myrtle may have gotten lost on her way to church the morning of June 9. “The only thing I can think is that she was on her way to church, which is about a five-minute drive from her home, down one street. And missed her turn and continued to drive and just got confused,” he said.
Dateline contacted the Dallas Police Department for an interview about Myrtle’s disappearance. Their public information officer, Senior Corporal Brian Martinez, told Dateline via email that Myrtle was last seen “on June 10, 2024, at approximately 12:00 p.m.”
The date conflicts with the information provided by Myrtle’s loved ones. Dateline followed up with Martinez about the conflicting dates, to which he replied, “According to the report, the reporting person travelled to the South Central Patrol Station to report her missing on June 10th and stated she was last seen on June 10th around noon.” The PIO also said, “We do not have any information that would discredit his report, but technically anything is possible.”
“The 10th is not an accurate date, as far as I’m concerned. But if it showed up on materials and Facebook, I’m pretty sure, at the time, I would have not been rushing to try to correct that,” Philip said, emphasizing that his focus was solely on finding his mother at that point.
Martinez told Dateline via email that “The Dallas Police Department has distributed critical missing alerts of Ms. Polk through various social media platforms such as, Facebook, X, and dpdbeat.com.” They also issued a silver alert. He confirmed the search for Myrtle is ongoing. “Detectives continue to actively work the case, and our Special Investigations Unit is assisting with the investigation,” he wrote. The department has received reports from members of the public claiming to have seen Myrtle. “We have followed up on and will continue to look into these tips, including some that have come from out of state,” Martinez wrote. “At this time, none have produced any information that have led us to finding Ms. Polk.”
Myrtle’s car, a 2004 Black Lexus ES 330 with Texas license plate BV7-K204, is also missing.
The Dallas PD PIO told Dateline that “officers canvassed the area and supplemental reports document numerous cameras in the area and at local businesses that were checked. None yielded any information helpful to finding her.”
“Her car doesn’t have blue-- you know, trackable technology. She does not carry her cell phone, and she doesn’t use credit cards,” son Philip said. “So the digital footprint for her is nil.”
“It’s just a mystery that a whole person in a whole car comes up missing and nobody has seen neither one,” friend Charlotte Lester said.
“She literally vanished into thin air. Every time I say it, I shake my head,” Philip said. “But since she was last seen sitting on her front porch on that Saturday -- at least to my understanding -- no one has been able to give us any kind of sense of what happened since then. So no one’s seen the car, no one’s seen her.”
Another group working on the search for Myrtle is Equusearch. “They have been to Dallas several times, you know, they brought ATVs, they drove around in ATVs in wooded areas,” Charlotte said. “They stopped at any lake, any place that had water.”
But nothing was ever found.
Charlotte says Myrtle has never disappeared like this before. “This is very out of character for her,” she said. Myrtle’s belongings, including her medications, were left behind in her home. “No clothes packed up, no jewelry taken, nothing,” she said.
“Now, I’m not there every day, but nothing looked out of place,” Philip said. “The one thing that I noticed in particular, was that on her bed, she had laid out some jeans and a T-shirt, which suggested to me she went to church in her Sunday morning garb, and this is what she had laid out for when she got back home -- what she was going to change into.”
Senior Corporal Martinez told Dateline via email it is unknown what Myrtle was last wearing, and authorities “have not found any items” they believe belong to her outside her home. Foul play is not currently suspected in the case.
“So many questions, not enough answers,” son Philip Polk said. “It has been a living nightmare since June 8th.”
Philip is grateful for the support he’s received from Myrtle’s community. “The community support was absolutely fantastic,” he said. “My mom has definitely been a pillar of her community and the community has stood up to try to find her. There are still businesses in the area with her missing poster kind of posted up in the front of the building. So we just appreciate that.”
Charlotte is choosing to remain positive. “I’m holding out hope,” she said, that her friend Myrtle will be found alive.
So is Myrtle’s son. “I choose to believe it’s not over. And those memories that keep me smiling are what keep me going every day,” Philip said. “I’m nowhere near accepting that this is over.”
Myrtle is around 5’3” tall and 130 lbs. with short silver-white hair and brown eyes. She has a mole on the side of her nose.
If you have any information about Myrtle Polk’s disappearance, please contact the Dallas Police Department at (214) 671-4268.
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