Missing teen Zoe Rowbotham’s parents make emotional plea: ‘Want her home’

Andre and Catrina Rowbothan are heartbroken over the disappearance of their daughter as her AMBER Alert remains active for a fourth day.

Zoe Rowbothan, 16, of Hurst, Texas, took a walk with her dad on Sunday night after she learned that she would be going to a long-term facility for her mental health issues in the coming week.

“We were doing a path that we walked daily for her anxiety. Her fears and anxiety were basically out of control, and she just became defiant,” Andre Rowbothan told Newsweek on Friday. “We were near the park in our neighborhood where we would normally decide to take the short way to home or the longer way home. I was trying to get her to go home the short way, and she was insistent that she was going to go the other way. So, I decided to go home the short way, get my phone, get the car, and basically make sure that I could get her home, and by the time I got to the top of the hill, she was gone.”

Texas officials issued an AMBER Alert on Tuesday for the missing 16-year-old who was last seen wearing a black T-shirt with white lettering, black shorts, and white shoes. The teen is described as white with brown hair and hazel eyes, standing at 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighing 240 pounds.

“We just want her home,” her mother said. “There are times in Zoe’s anxiety that she literally is held like a baby because she needs that. I just want to hold my kid.”

Andre Rowbotham tells Newsweek that he adopted Zoe at six weeks old while in a previous marriage. The parents say their daughter is impulsive and deals with borderline personality disorder, ADHD, and two depressive disorders. They say she often spins the truth into a fantasy story to make her life seem more interesting.

A family who lives on the other side of the park told the teen’s parents that they spoke to her at the time of her disappearance.

“She told them that she was trying to get to a boyfriend’s place. She told them that she was six months pregnant, but she’s not,” her father said. “She told them that she was a foster child and didn’t know the area, so they offered to try to give her a ride where he thought she wanted to go, and she declined and left them.”

Her parents say their daughter does not have a cell phone or any money with her. She was initially believed to be traveling on foot, but her parents fear she could have gotten into a car by now.

History of Mental Health Treatment

Her parents describe their daughter as “very intelligent”.

“She’s in advanced chemistry. She’s in advanced English,” Catrina Rowbotham said. “She’s fluent in Spanish. She speaks some Chinese. She’s able to pick up languages very easily. In sixth grade, she learned to play the violin in a couple of months and excelled past kids who had been learning it since first grade.”

But the teen’s parents say she has been in and out of hospitals in the past year that have changed her medications, which has hurt her.

“The medications that she had been taking were just to help keep her stable, help keep the anxiety down, and help her to be able to manage. But because of preparing to go to the facility, we have been working to back down the medications as much as possible,” her father said.

Catrina Rowbotham talked about her daughter’s mental health issues.

“She craves constant attention, but when she gets the attention, she pushes it away,” her mother said. “There is a constant self-doubt and self-loathing. Zoe will often become her acquaintances, she will take on their characteristics to fit in.”

The parents say their daughter previously has been to a residential treatment center but believe the long-term mental health facility would be the best environment to help her borderline personality disorder. They said the facility provides dialectical behavior therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy.

Dialectical behavior therapy is a type of psychotherapy that helps people manage their emotions and improve their relationships. It is based on cognitive behavioral therapy and is designed to help people who experience intense emotions tolerate distress and avoid harmful behaviors.

Parents’ Plea To The Public

Andre and Catrina Rowbotham are asking the public to be kind about their daughter’s disappearance.

“Her life is a 16-year journey, and you’re getting a glimpse of five days. Don’t judge, don’t assume, you don’t know her whole story,” her mother said. “Don’t fill social media with comments because the FBI, the police department, and detectives have to comb through that minutia to determine if there’s anything of relevance and a lot of it is just noise.

“I would ask if anybody thinks they see her to look at her pictures and make sure that it’s not just a teenage girl with dark hair. Does she have wide eyes? Does she have blonde streaks? Is she disheveled? Does she look displaced?”

Anyone with information on Zoe Rowbotham’s whereabouts should call the Hurst Police Department at 817-788-7180.

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