'I'm really glad to be home'

Tallulah – It started out innocently enough.

A teenage girl, playing Xbox Live alongside her three brothers.

It ended in a two-day, all-too-real nightmare.

Adrian Grace Burchfield – known affectionally to her family and friends as “Gracie” – is a 17-year-old girl who lives just a few miles outside the Robbinsville town limits. Home-schooled, she lives with her father, Junior; mother, Donna; and brothers Lance (21), T.J. (19) and Jake (12).

It’s a simple, loving home. Nothing appears abnormal on the surface because nothing is abnormal. The family of six has a Sunday Bible study every week, and mother and daughter are close.

However, the heart wants what the heart wants. Around 2 a.m. Feb. 1, Gracie made a decision that would send her family into a panic for next 48 hours.

‘It was terrifying’

When Junior went to wake his daughter up Saturday morning, he didn’t give a second thought to the process. In fact, Gracie had stood in her parents’ bedroom just the night before, laughing and spending time reading the Bible. 

All seemed normal. But plans were already in motion for something her parents could have never seen coming.

“We couldn’t understand this, either,” Donna said. “It’s not what she was running from; it’s what she was running to.

“I don’t want to call us ignorant, but we were just blindsided.”

While chatting on Xbox Live with players, Gracie met 21-year-old John Wilkerson Wall, a resident of Oklahoma City. Though nearly 16 hours apart, the conversations escalated and became more than just “friends talking.”

In short, Gracie developed feelings for a man she had never met. She even told Wall she was 18, when her first day as an adult will not occur until August.

But there was no turning back.

“I really, really liked this guy,” Gracie said. “I didn’t leave with him for certain things; I wanted to be with him.

“At the time, I was enjoying it, but I was also missing my family.”

A package was delivered to a neighboring home for Gracie. It was her aunt’s residence and, inside, a cell phone, so Gracie and John could communicate more efficiently.

Eventually, Gracie and John made plans on Jan. 29. John left Oklahoma City around 10 a.m. Jan. 31 and drove straight to Robbinsville.

Straight to Gracie.

He made it to the residence around 2 a.m. Gracie got ready and left. Even though Junior and Donna had installed an ADT security system, they had just put in a sliding-glass door on the front-side of the house. It was in an admitted “blind spot,” with no cameras or alarms.

“I got ready, I got my stuff and left,” Gracie said.

Gracie exited the residence, undetected. Until Junior opened her bedroom door a few hours later.

Homesick

It didn’t take long for Gracie to realize she had made a mistake.

“Before and after, I knew it was a bad idea,” she admitted. “But my attention was on this guy. I knew how I felt about him, and I knew my parents wouldn’t approve of me dating online. 

“I decided to leave. That was a stupid idea, and I should have never done it.”

Meanwhile, the family was virtually inconsolable. A partially packed bag had been found in the basement, so they feared the worst. Especially since Gracie had never been apart from them.

Ever.

“I never realized how important my family is until I didn’t have them,” Gracie said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about them, and I knew they were probably having a hard time.”

Gracie and John arrived back in Oklahoma City on Saturday night. He took her to a house – where Wall lives with both an aunt and a younger brother – and Gracie showered before going to bed. 

In the morning, he went to get them something to eat, and later he went to work. 

After he left, she heard a knock on the door. By this time, authorities had pinged Wall’s cell phone and pieced the puzzle together, after Donna discovered his phone number written down in her bedroom and conversed with Lamar and T.J. about Wall.

“We had an idea she was with him, but we weren’t 100 percent sure,” Junior said. “We didn’t definitely know until they caught him.”

“I heard a knock on the door. I was home alone because they had went to church,” Gracie said. “I looked through the door, and it was the cops.”

Coming home

Gracie fled to the bathroom and refused to open the door. His family arrived home around 10 minutes after authorities left, and she knew she had to get in contact with John.

“I said, ‘The cops were here’ and he said, ‘Yeah, they’re here, too,’ “ Gracie said. “He said, ‘The cop will be coming back; just please go with them. Don’t fight and just leave, please.’ When the cop came back, I opened the door for him, and he put me in his car.”

Through further communication with John, Junior and Donna found him to be a “well-mannered young man,” who also took a huge impact from all of this.

“He told us on the phone, ‘People are looking at me like I’m going to snatch their kid, and I’m just not that way. If I had wanted to hide, I wouldn’t have went to work. I would have turned off the location on my phone. I’m not a kidnapper. I just thought I was helping her out, and I care about her,’ “ Donna said.

“But it could have ended so much worse.”

The dangers

Anyone can say anything while using a keyboard. Emotions and truths often get lost in context.

For Wall, it may just be as simple as that.

“She told him she was 18,” Donna said. “He called me after they picked her up – I had been in contact with him, just trying to get him to talk, and it was an excruciating couple of days doing that – I asked him, ‘How old is Gracie?’

“He said, ‘She’s 18.’ I said, ‘No sir, she’s 17 years old.’ He flipped out at that time. He said, ‘I could have been charged for taking her across state lines. I had no idea.’ I said, ‘Yes, you could.’ It just went from there. After that happened, I was trying to keep him calm.”

Donna and Junior thought they had taken proper precautions. Admittedly strict, they didn’t think anything about it when they would pass by the gaming room downstairs and someone would be talking.

“We just thought they were talking to themselves,” Junior said.

“We’re a tight family,” Donna said. “We’re here for each other. We pray together. 

“I can get that most of the time, it’s the parents fault. They’re in abusive homes or just bad situations. But that’s not the case here.”

Lessons learned

Gracie returned home Friday. A big banner adorned the garage, “Welcome Home Gracie” and balloons lined the guardrail leading up the driveway. 

Graham County Sheriff Joseph Jones and Capt. Jerry Crisp personally drove to Oklahoma City to bring Gracie back home. The original plan to put her on a plane was thwarted by heavy snowfall there.

The Burchfields will be forever grateful to the sheriff’s office, for not only the quick actions it took to find Gracie, but the comfort deputies provided in a time of chaos.

“LouAnn (McMahan, patrol officer) came when the initial 911 call was placed,” Donna said. “She was here – off and on – all day after that. She stayed until 12:30 that night with us. 

“In my mind, of course, I thought Gracie was gone with sex traffickers. I had educated all my kids on that, which is what got me about this. I was so terrified and LouAnn kept saying, ‘No, we’re not doing that. We’re not going there. We’re going to bring her home.’ She saved me through this.”

“When we were kids, there wasn’t stuff like this,” Junior added.

Junior and Donna are not to blame. With all the online dating sites out there today, who would have ever guessed you could meet a romantic interest on Xbox? 

The incident has resonated throughout the community. One parent discovered his daughter was talking to a 27-year-old man from Texas after they met through online gaming.

“I monitored the Internet because I have kids,” Donna said. “But to know it would happen through a game, when she was downstairs? We let her have her privacy and knowing now what I wish I had known then, I would have been a more nosy parent. Parents need to know what’s going on in their kids’ lives.

“Most parents won’t allow their children to date somebody they meet online, and that was us. She knew for a fact that would not happen. My boys won’t date anybody they meet online; it’s dangerous. We were always those parents that would say, ‘Wow, that’s sad, what happened to our child.’ But it was our child this time.”

Gracie’s Plan

Understandably, Gracie’s Xbox Live account has been cancelled. 

And she’s just fine with that, because her focus will be on outreach.

Included in that initiative is Gracie’s Voice, a website where Gracie will tell her story and hope to reach a larger audience and make a difference.

“She does plan to work with the sheriff’s department – and anyone she can – to get the word out there,” Donna said. “I hear parents saying they don’t want to be nosy; do. Talk to them. And if there’s a problem, get them some help.”

Gracie’s safe return home is unquestionably the best-case scenario for this type of occurrence. Far too often, girls – and even boys – are lured into these same situations and never seen again.

“After it was over, it gave me time to think about how bad it was,” Gracie said. “I’m so thankful, because there’s other girls that don’t make it out. I learned my lesson, for sure. I don’t want other girls to do what I did, because it could end badly and they could lose their families and their family lose them.

“I’m really glad to be home.”