http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/please_come_home_we_miss_you_w.html'Please come home ... We miss you. We love you' By Frank Donnelly
January 24, 2010, 7:00AM
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Five years ago, 17-year-old Arkadiy Tashman tucked this chilling note under a remote control in his Mariners Harbor home:
"Sorry about this," it said. "No wake, no funeral."
The avid skateboarder has not been seen since.
Tuesday marks the fifth anniversary of Tashman's disappearance. The slim teen was last seen Jan. 26, 2005, at 2:30 a.m. around Maple Parkway heading to his nearby Brabant Street home after hanging out with a friend.
"I'm in shock to realize it's even been five years," said Tashman's sister, Natalya Voskresenskaya, 32, a software engineer from New Jersey, in a recent telephone interview. "To everyone, it was devastating."
Despite her brother's note, there is no evidence he committed suicide. And none of the few-and-far-between leads regarding his possible fate or whereabouts has panned out over the years.
Still, Ms. Voskresenskaya clings to the hope her long-lost brother, who goes by the nickname Ark, is alive.
"No news is good news," she tells herself.
Where her brother might be, she can't say.
The NYPD continues to list Tashman as a missing person on its Web site,
www.nyc.gov/nypd.
Tashman's family has tried everything to find him.
In the days and weeks after his vanishing, they distributed thousands of "missing" posters just about everywhere they could think of.
They have scoured and re-scoured Tashman's old haunts in Brooklyn, Greenwich Village and parts of Staten Island.
They even hired a private eye who initially gave them some hope before the relationship soured.
They've also sought the help of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Tashman's picture, along with an age-progressed image, appear on the group's Web site,
www.missingkids.com.
Nothing's panned out.
"We've been following every tiny, tiny lead, no matter how ridiculous it sounds," said Ms. Voskresenskaya.
The last lead came two years ago when an upstate woman thought she had seen Tashman near Woodstock. The family rents a bungalow upstate every summer. Praying they had hit paydirt, Ms. Voskresenskaya and her mother dropped everything and sped north only to be disappointed again.
"It's been hell, to be honest," Ms. Voskresenskaya said with a heavy sigh. "In the beginning, I thought it can't go on for one more day. We can't handle it."
But, she says, her family has soldiered on, even if he she admits to sometimes "consciously lying" to herself to keep up her spirits.
Although she can't prove it, Ms. Voskresenskaya theorizes her brother, in an act of teen-age insecurity, struck out on his own, attempting to prove his independence.
Despite being 10 years apart in age, Ms. Voskresenskaya said she and her sibling were close.
When she moved into a new place, he came over to help out and literally painted his way into a closet.
"He always made me laugh," she said. "He had an amazing sense of humor. Whoever met him was in love with Arkadiy."
Ms. Voskresenskaya said her brother is very smart and loved skateboarding.
He has light brown hair and gray eyes and was between 6 feet and 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighed 170 to 180 pounds when he vanished. His left ear was pierced and he had scars on both arms.
Ms. Voskresenskaya said she and her parents miss her brother terribly and have this simple message for him wherever he might be.
"Please come home," she said. "We miss you. We love you."
Call the NYPD Missing Person Squad at 212-473-2042 and ask for Det. Crawford.
