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“without a trace,” continued...
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days when she was a Shadle Park High School student. As a teenager, she balanced boyfriends and activities with her schoolwork and a job working the drive-thru at the Arby’s on Third and Washington. She bounced between a few jobs in her 20s, but by the time she disappeared in 2010 she was committed to getting her degree and starting a career. “I’d call her and I’d need to talk to her — vent about something. She’d say, ‘Mom, I’m doing homework, I can’t talk,’” her mother says. “Don’t get me wrong, she wasn’t a total bookworm. But she was serious about what she was doing. And she wanted to do the best.” Higgins was studying to be a journalist at Eastern Washington University. It was work that lined up with one of her core beliefs: to always look out for the little guy. “She was always for the underdog,” her mother says. “And she was a person that really loved justice, which runs in our family. And if the underdog was being done wrong by, you always take their side. None of that bullying business when Heather was around.”
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Maybe that’s because Higgins knew, despite her flawless exterior, what it was like to feel different on the inside. For years she struggled with panic attacks and anxiety until, at age 28, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She doubted the diagnosis and sought a second opinion. Could she really be sick? She said that pills made her feel muted. But her mother says she diligently took her medication and slowly got used to its effects. She carried a miniature spray bottle filled with water in her purse, and if she felt like a panic attack was coming on, she’d mist her face and take long, deep breaths. One day in early September of 2010, Forney got a call from Sacred Heart Medical Center. Details were scarce, but somehow, her daughter had been admitted to the psychiatric ward there. When Forney rushed to her bedside, her daughter was panicking, spouting what seemed like paranoid delusions about the people living in her neighborhood. Forney knew that stress often was a trigger for her daughter’s panic attacks, and Higgins