Whatever should happen, God cares

On June 6, Yulia Solodyankina was coming down with something. Nevertheless she went to a joyous percussion performance at a bar near the University of Edinburgh, where she is a physics student. The show began at 7 p.m. She left at 9 p.m. Although she sent a friend a text message the next day, she has not been seen again.

Like many foreign students in Edinburgh, Yulia is involved in the city’s close-knit dancing scene. And, like millions of others, she has a Facebook account. So when Yulia’s friends discovered that she had not only missed Saturday’s dance performance, that she had disappeared, they took to Facebook.

Creating a Facebook page called “Yulia is Missing,” Yulia’s friends invited their Facebook friends to join it. They created a Twitter account called “#findyulia.” They contacted British media outlets. They plastered Edinburgh with Yulia’s photo and, through their Facebook page, encouraged new, more far-flung subscribers to “Yulia is Missing” to post her photo in their cities. A young entrepreneur donated £3,000 to produce coffee cups bearing Yulia’s image. A reporter at the Scotsman has written five consecutive articles about her disappearance...