Ricardo, where are you? - Woman searches for son she left with market vendor 35 years ago

Thirty four years ago, a teenaged Erica Ellis left her one-year-old son, Ricardo, with a vendor in Spanish Town as she went to work as a domestic helper for a day. When she returned, the woman and her baby had disappeared.

Ellis said she has tried everything to find her child.

"I remember calling a talk show programme and a man behind bars had reached out to me to say that he was my son. My children and I were overjoyed, but it turned out that it wasn't him," she said.

Ricardo was born in 1984 when Ellis was just 15 years old. Her childhood, she said, was no bed of roses.

She stated that her mother died when she was 12 years old, and she was sent to live with another family member elsewhere in St Catherine and was sexually assaulted by him.

"My family had me like a puss kitten. I would be all over the place, so when I was 15, I ran away from home because I couldn't take the bad treatment anymore," she said.

Ellis said she eventually met a woman who offered her a job as a domestic helper.

"I was like a slave. I would wash, cook, and clean, and sometimes she barely wanted to pay me. Mi never really know much about man, but I met a police, and we got involved and shortly after, I got pregnant. When I told him about the pregnancy, he said if I ever make the mistake and register the child in his name, or let his wife know about it, he was going to shoot me, so I had to keep quiet."

Ellis said the woman with whom she was working demanded that she abort the child, but the doctors told her that the pregnancy was too advanced for the procedure to be done.

"I continued to work for her, and she had stopped paying me, so one day she sent me to the post office to collect some money that her daughter had sent, and I took one of the envelopes and paid myself a part of what she owed me, and she ran me out with my baby," Ellis recalled.

LITTLE CHOICE

With nowhere to go with her son, Ellis said she had little choice except to sleep in abandoned buildings.

"I was on the streets for several months in old buildings. I remember picking up bones off the streets to eat. I use to have the baby on my side just looking food for him. I remember one time, I catch my poor baby eating 'putty' that they used on cars ... it was rough for us," she said.

Ellis said she sought assistance from her family members but claimed they all turned a blind eye.

"They were against me because they were accusing me of telling lies on the family member that abused me, but I was speaking the truth. There were nights that my son would be crying, and when I was in the old buildings and men would hear and promised to help me, but instead they would turn around and rape me right beside my son," she said.

She told THE WEEKEND STAR that she went to Spanish Town in search of work, and it was there that she got a few domestic jobs.

"There was a lady selling mango, and I was explaining my situation to her. She told me to go and wash the clothes and come back for him, but when I returned, she wasn't there. Honestly, mi did stay longer than mi expect that day because it was a lot of dirty clothes, and they wouldn't pay me unless I finish. I wanted the money to buy food for the baby, so I stayed and wash, but when I came back, the lady and my baby was gone," said Ellis, who has six other children.

Anyone who knows the whereabouts of Ricardo Ellis may email her at shadayfarquharson59@gmail.com.