Is Stephanie Alsbrook truly a missing child? Snopes.com confirms: Inside a chain mail/text message hoax!

UPDATE 5/3: Starcasm had been covering this prior to Snopes.com weighing in on the controversy, but it is good to see the venerable site dedicated to debunking the debunkable confirm what our findings: The abduction of Stephanie Alsbrook is a hoax. For more info, read on:

I just received the following text message from a dear friend of mine alerting me to a missing child. Here’s what it said:

PLEASE look at the picture, read what her Dad says, then forward this message on.My 17 month old girl, STEPHANIE ALSBROOK, is missing. She has been missing for two weeks now. Maybe if everyone passes this on, someone will see this child. That is how the girl from Stevens Point was found, by circulation of her picture on TV…. The Internet circulates even overseas, South America , and Canada etc. Please pass this to everyone in your address book. With GOD on her side, she will be found. I am asking you all, begging you to please forward this email on to anyone and everyone you know, PLEASE.It is still not too late. Please help us. If anyone knows anything, please contact me at: 520 421 1737 I am including a picture of her.All prayers are appreciated!! It only takes 2 seconds to forward this If it was your child what would you do?

Naturally, my heart jumped a little bit as I read the anguished beginning of the message. I take the safety of children very seriously, and the thought of one more Amber Alert going out because some nutcase has kidnapped a child just makes me angry.

But there might be something that makes me even angrier, if that’s possible, and that is the hoaxers that play with the feelings of people, like my very well-meaning friend. As I read the email, I couldn’t help but become suspicious that I was being had.

I dialed the phone number listed above (so you don’t have to): Rather conveniently, I got a message that the “mailbox had not yet been set up.” Apparently, the anguished father sent out a chain mail text before he got the method of collecting actual information that could save his child set up? Not likely.

I also did a quick Google search and found no verified police authority that has any alert out for a missing child by the name of Stephanie Alsbrook.

What I did find was that this hoax is spreading like wildfire via text message, email and social media. Already it’s popping up on my Facebook page and it’s going around on Twitter. My friend who sent me the text also posted it on Facebook. She’s a wonderful person with a good heart who just wants to help – and that’s exactly the sort of person most taken in by this kind of joke.

In fact, she’s already received a few replies to her FB post, with even more well-meaning people asking how they can help. Reading between the lines of their posts, it seems they think it’s my friend who is somehow closely connected to Stephanie Alsbrook, when really she’s just forwarding on the hoax. This is very insidious!

This is bad because it gets in the way of actual Amber Alert messages about actual child abductions. It also gives people Amber Alert fatigue, wondering if the message they just got is real or fake.

So here’s a different kind of Amber Alert: if you know of anyone responsible for sending out such horrible hoax messages, send Starcasm an email and we’ll spread the word!