A 28-year-old man has been missing from the Westport, Washington coastline since the evening of July 31, and state troopers have now activated a statewide alert reserved for endangered missing Indigenous people to help bring him home. Chen-Wa August was last seen around 6 p.m. that Friday near Jetty Haul Road, wearing a black jacket and black pants, according to the Missing Indigenous Person Alert issued Friday. He stands 6 feet 3 inches tall, weighs about 180 pounds, and has black hair and brown eyes.
The alert, activated by the Washington State Patrol on behalf of the Westport Police Department, was requested on August 7 and carries case number 26-W01851, according to a bulletin posted by the Washington State Patrol on Facebook. The post instructs anyone who sees August to call 911 and notes that the account is not monitored for tips. The search actually began days earlier: Westport Police first investigated a suspicious person report involving August at Westport Light State Park on July 31, and the following morning officers discovered his motorcycle had sat unattended in the parking lot for two days, according to The Daily World. That discovery, made after Westport Police had already searched the park July 31 without locating anyone in distress, prompted officers to contact August's family and launch a multi-agency ground and drone search, the newspaper reported.
Search Crews Comb Dunes and Jetty Trails
Search operations around Westhaven and Westport Light State Park have drawn in local law enforcement, Grays Harbor Search and Rescue, K-9 teams, aerial drones, and community volunteers, according to a Facebook post from Grays Harbor Scanner. The intensity of that response led authorities to temporarily close Westhaven/Westport Light Park to the public in early August, per the same post. The terrain complicates the search: the park's coastal dune trails and ocean jetty access points along the Pacific require specialized equipment to cover, the post noted. It remains unclear whether investigators have found any new evidence near Jetty Haul Road in the days between the search's initial pause and Friday's statewide alert activation.
Bulletin Misidentified Him as White, Advocates Say
August is an Indigenous man affiliated with the Tla'amin Nation and the Blackfeet Nation, but the Westport Police Department's initial missing person bulletin, released August 2, identified him as a white male, according to Facebook posts that drew criticism from Indigenous advocacy groups. Those organizations say misidentifying missing Native individuals hinders public visibility and can delay the specialized state-level alerts meant to speed up recovery efforts, per the same posts. The Missing Indigenous Person Alert for August was not issued until five days later, on Friday.
How Washington's Alert System Works
Washington became the first state in the nation to establish a statewide Missing Indigenous Person Alert system on July 1, 2022, after Governor Jay Inslee signed House Bill 1725 into law that March, according to KING 5 News. The bill was prime-sponsored by Representative Debra Lekanoff to streamline handoffs between tribal, municipal, and state law enforcement, the station reported. Under the law, missing Indigenous individuals of any age are legally defined as endangered, which removes previous requirements for police to prove foul play or other extenuating circumstances before broadcasting a public alert, according to the Washington State Attorney General's Office. Before HB 1725, missing person advisories often demanded explicit proof of imminent danger or abduction, delays that could slow investigations involving missing Native people, the AG's office noted.
Activating one of these alerts requires mutual agreement between the investigating local or tribal agency and the Washington State Patrol, along with active entry of the missing person into the National Crime Information Center database, per KING 5. Local departments keep primary investigative authority while the state patrol serves as the statewide clearinghouse that broadcasts the alert across patrol channels, local media, electronic highway signs, and wireless emergency broadcasts, the Attorney General's Office has said.
A System Built Amid a Documented Crisis
The stakes behind the alert system are stark: research cited by the Seattle Indian Health Board found that although Indigenous people make up less than 2% of Washington's population, Native women face missing-person rates four times higher than white women and murder rates more than ten times the national average, KING 5 reported. Washington has historically ranked among the states with the highest recorded totals of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, per federal and state data cited by the station. Since the alert system's July 2022 launch through mid-2025, it has facilitated a recovery rate above 80% for more than 150 missing Indigenous individuals, according to the Attorney General's Office. A more recent tally from the Washington State MMIWP Task Force found that from the program's launch through April, the state patrol had issued 220 Missing Indigenous Person Alerts total, resulting in 203 people being found alive; task force officials attributed the rising annual alert numbers to greater law enforcement awareness rather than an increase in disappearances.
Washington's model has since spread beyond its borders — California, Idaho, and Arizona have each passed similar legislation establishing statewide emergency alerts for missing Indigenous people, according to the Attorney General's Office. Anyone with information about Chen-Wa August's whereabouts is asked to call 911.
