Chicago moms of missing persons wrestle with complicated emotions on Mother’s Day

Cheeks wet with tears, Tracey Bradley wondered aloud how her daughters would look today.Her daughters Tionda and Diamond were 10 and 3, respectively, when they were reported missing in July 2001. Nearly 25 years later, Bradley wishes she could see them now. If she did, she knows she’d recognize them, she said.“I wouldn’t know how they look today,” she said. “But if I would see them today, you know, a mother has intuition, and knows that that’s their child.”While many Chicago moms spent Sunday enjoying the spring weather and being pampered by their loved ones, Bradley and others spent Mother’s Day missing the children who gave them that title.Bradley, La Shann Walker and Karen Phillips, all mothers of missing persons, gathered at a South Loop press conference begging for answers about where their children were.Phillips, whose daughter postal worker Kierra Coles was reported missing in 2018, says her daughter’s case and other missing persons cases need more attention from the city. Coles was 26 and three months’ pregnant when she was last seen leaving her apartment near 82nd Street and Coles Avenue in South Chicago, according to Chicago police. Karen Phillips, whose daughter postal worker Kierra Coles was reported missing in 2018, says her daughter’s case and other missing persons cases need more attention from the city.Brian Rich/Sun-Times file For Phillips, Mother’s Day comes with loaded emotions.“I was waiting to see my daughter experience motherhood, and now I may never get a chance to see that,” she said, adding that…

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