The Vanishing of Ida Peak: A Seattle Restaurant Girl’s Disappearance Sparks a Search
Ida Peak, a waitress at the New York Wafer House on Cherry Street, vanished after claiming she was visiting her sister in Bellevue. Her family is left with only rumors and a missing person's description.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
IDA PEAK She Was a Restaurant Girl.
Ida Peak, formerly employed at the Royal Cafe on Third Avenue, has disappeared and the most diligent search on the part of her relatives has failed to reveal her whereabouts.
Thursday, April 28, she returned on a visit to her parents at Bellevue, on Hood Canal, where she had been spending a two months' vacation. She encamped now at the Conklin House at 103 Third Avenue, and on the following Monday commenced work at the New York Wafer House on Cherry Street. On Wednesday afternoon she took her turn off, expecting to return to work at 1 o'clock, but instead she sent a boy to the restaurant for her aprons, claiming that she had received a message from her sister, who works in the asylum at Bellevue, to come over there, as she had secured a position for her.
Everybody supposed she had gone there until about a week later, when the sister came over to visit her in Seattle one day and was much surprised to find that Ida was missing. She positively denied having sent such a message to her.
Ida Peak has a brother, Marion Peak, living at Green Lake, and he is doing what he can to find her.
Miss I. [Ida] is rather small, about five feet four inches in height, dark complexion and dark hair. She is quiet and retiring in disposition. She was known to have some money at the time of her disappearance, but how much no one knows.
Her strange action is causing her brother
This 1903 missing person report highlights the precarious nature of work for young women in early Seattle’s service industry. Without modern digital tracking or robust social safety nets, a single misunderstood message could lead to a disappearance that baffled families and police alike, reflecting the vulnerability of laborers who lived hand-to-mouth.
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