Ruthey Smith’s 2-year-old daughter seems to understand, in her child-like way, what it means when she sees her mother’s face on missing persons’ posters.
“She just asks why everybody else has a mommy and she doesn’t. She’s just confused. She’s hurting,” said Kathryn Smith, Ruthey’s mother, of her granddaughter.
Kathryn has been raising her granddaughter since the suspected abduction of her daughter, Ruthey Smith, over a year ago. Long Beach police have said they believe she is a victim of human trafficking, and that detectives are actively investigating the case.
Kathryn said 19-year-old Ruthey began doing sex work to provide greater income for her infant daughter near the end of 2021. Ruthey was last seen in early March 2022 on Figueroa Street in Los Angeles, an area infamous for prostitution and sex trafficking.
Lois Lee, a well known anti-sex trafficking advocate who has been aiding victims in LA County and beyond since the 70s, told the Signal Tribune in a 2022 interview that sex workers who offer their services on the streets are particularly vulnerable to abductions by traffickers.
Ruthey Smith is described as a Black woman with brown hair and brown eyes, 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighing around 125 pounds. She has a pierced nose and belly button, the names “Ezra” and “Lamarion” tattooed near one of her ears and the name “Ocean” tattooed on her chest along with a wave.
Ruthey was 19 years old when she went missing, and would now be 20 years old. Ruthey may also go by the aliases Grayson or Winter, according to the California Department of Justice.
Black women and girls are trafficked at a higher rate across the nation than other races, including in Long Beach. Black residents make up around 12.1% of Long Beach’s population, but represented 59% of human trafficking victims recovered by LBPD from January 2017 to June 2022, according to data from a public records request by the Signal Tribune.
Her mother described Ruthey as being a shy, timid girl who fell in with a bad crowd, and was lured by the amount of money she could make through sex work.
“There’s reasons that these girls are going through what they’re going through,” Kathryn said of women who go into sex work. “My daughter’s situation happened to be not having a father in the house, and me just busting my butt to raise them but just not doing good enough and not offering enough for her. I did the best I could but she wanted more. She wanted to have her daughter have nice things and get her own place and do nice things.”
Kathryn said that while her daughter did go out at night to make money, she would always come home, and that she is sure Ruthey would not have left her daughter.
Kathryn has dedicated herself to finding her daughter. When her daughter first went missing, Kathryn drove from city to city, searching different hotels, and only stopped because she ran out of money and still had to care for her granddaughter.
She obtained the help of a private investigator, and most recently held a candlelight vigil for her daughter outside the Long Beach Police Headquarters on July 28.
“I just feel like I’m letting her down now, even though I know I’m doing everything I can to try my hardest to get her story out there, as a mother,” Kathryn said.
Anyone who may have information about Ruthey Smith is urged to call Detective Gabriel Garrido with the LBPD Missing Persons Detail at (562) 570-7246 or Police Dispatch at (562) 435-6711. Those who wish to remain anonymous may submit a tip through “LA Crime Stoppers” by calling 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or visiting www.lacrimestoppers.org.