After Amber was thrust into the system, the state found her to be unsuitable for life with a foster family. Instead, they placed her into a Chicago youth shelter, where her whereabouts were less monitored. As a result, she wound up running away nine times over the next six weeks.

Amber left the youth shelter for the final time on January 23, 1997 and never returned. Whether she intended to go back to her temporary home will forever remain a mystery, because fate intervened and within a matter of weeks the young teenager would be dead.