He drove for hours to look for daughter

SINGAPORE - For the past four months, a 65-year-old cabby who wanted to be known only as Mr Toh spent long hours plying the streets near Jalan Tenteram in the Whampoa area.

He was looking for his missing daughter, 35, who suffers from depression.

Thankfully, his worries ended on Sunday when his daughter returned home.

But the feeling of desperation and pain over the past months is hard to forget.

"Initially I drove around for another four hours after my shift every night looking for her, hoping to catch a glimpse," he told The New Paper, adding that stormy nights were no exception.

Fatigue

But fatigue soon got the better of him.

"There were nights when I could not carry on... and these were the nights I would be wondering if she had been there and I wasn't," he said.

Just when the TNP team wanted to join him in his search of the Whampoa area early on Tuesday morning, he called with good news - his daughter had returned.

"She came home on Sunday. My neighbours were the first to spot her and called me," Mr Toh said.

His daughter, an introvert since young, was suffering from depression when she left home on Oct 17 last year.

Mr Toh said she was found at Jalan Tenteram on that same day and was brought home, only to disappear again two hours later.

He said she was diagnosed with depression six years ago and was under medication to manage her disorder, but never took them regularly.

"When she left home in October last year, she only had the clothes on her back, her mobile phone and $1,300, which, Mr Toh believed, would have been used up during the months she went missing. He still does not know how she survived.

Now that she has returned, Mr Toh hopes his daughter will stay.

juditht@sph.com.sg

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