WASHINGTON, DC (WUSA9)--Chances are you have never heard of Unique Harris. If you search her name on the internet, only a handful of mainstream media sites mention her.
WUSA9's Surae Chinn first reported on Unique's disappearance 2 years ago. She had already been missing 2 years before that.
Ask Unique's mother, Valencia, and she'll say, how much attention your case gets depends on race.
"I would, in a snap of a finger, I would exchange my life for her right now," Valencia tells WUSA9's Surae Chinn. "No family should endure this. No family."
The anniversaries are hardest. Valencia held a vigil back in October 2014. Four years after Unique disappeared from her home on Hartford Street in Southeast while her boys ages 3 and 4, and a young cousin slept.
"I promised them, their grandma was going to find their mother or die trying to find her," says Valencia.
Her determination is palpable even as people want her to give up.
"I'm not going to let anyone kill my daughter off without any proof that she's dead. Not a judge and not an attorney."
She keeps Unique's belongings close, including the jacket her daughter wore the night she disappeared.
"Never even washed it. Still smells like her," says Valencia standing on the street corner near Unique's apartment.
Valencia also has her daughter's glasses. Unique would have never left home without them says Valencia. She has poor eye sight.
"She could't have seen her way down the first flight of steps of that building. Let alone all the other flights of steps and out the building without her glasses."
Also left behind was Unique's purse, money and identification. Her cell phone was missing. There were no signs of forced entry into Unique's apartment.
Adding to the struggle is getting people to care about her daughter's disappearance. Back in October 2014 Valencia told WUSA9 "Sometimes we will come out here, and some people wouldn't even take the fliers."
"I chose to do something about it," says Kelsey March, an American University grad student in fine arts.
That something is a documentary film called "Non-Critical." March followed Valencia for a year to tell Unique's story and shed light on minorities who go missing.
"Unique is only a year older," says Marsh. "How she was taken with her children still unharmed. How did I not hear about it happening in my community? I want some social change."
DC Metropolitan Police are currently investigating Unique's disappearance with the same resources as a homicide case, with homicide detectives.
Valencia tells WUSA9 she was on the phone with her daughter when Unique told her she thought she was witnessing a murder outside of her apartment window. Could this have played a role in Unique's disappearance? Valencia does not know for sure. What Valencia does know is that she just spent another Mother's Day without her daughter.
Does Valencia think her daughter is still alive? That's a tough question she says. "That's probably a question I've asked myself a gazillion times....What I will say is that miracles happen everyday."
Valencia's message to her daughter is simple, "Your mother loves you madly. Your mother and family have never stopped missing you. I am still looking for you with every fiber of my being. I am not satisfied nor will I stop until I find you. Until then you just hold on and you stay in prayer."
Unique is 5'7" and weighs 130 pounds. At the time of her disappearance she had brown hair with auburn highlights. She has a tattoo of the names "Richard & U'Andre" on her lower back and a tattoo of her name "Unique" on her upper right arm. She has a mole on her upper lip and her ears are pierced. She was last seen wearing a white shirt, gray pants, a sterling silver necklace with a safety pin clasp, and a matching necklace and earrings set with garnet beads.
If you have any information on Unique's whereabouts, please call Metropolitan Police at 202-727-9099 or 202-724-2083.
