http://www.azcentral.com/community/chan ... g0601.html
15 years later, missing woman's son finds himself
Ray Parker
The Arizona Republic
May. 31, 2007 12:52 PM
Seventeen-year-old Kyle Collins of Chandler graduated from Dobson High last week, passing through one more of life's milestones without his mother there to see it.
Lisa Jameson disappeared more than 15 years ago under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind a toddler son and a tight-knit family.
On Nov. 5, 1991, Jameson had finished working the graveyard shift at a Chandler electronics company. She dropped a co-worker off at about 7:15 a.m., then was never seen again.
She was 23.
Police investigating the case found nothing to suggest she simply ran away: no credit cards were missing, no clothes were gone, no money was withdrawn. She had never been in trouble with the law. She just vanished.
A month after her disappearance, police found her red Pontiac LeMans abandoned in a Phoenix parking lot. It held few clues, and the trail from there went cold.
"Every Mother's Day we send out 20 balloons into the air ever since Kyle has been 2," said his aunt, Gilbert resident Treva Kimbrough.
Frank and Barbara Collins eventually adopted their youngest daughter's son, raising him in the north Chandler home they moved into in 1978.
"I talk to him about his mother all the time," said Barbara, 72.
The boy whose life began with a mystery that's had no resolution has since filled it with burning ambition, thanks to the support of his extended family.
He became a good student, basketball player and even an entrepreneur. He recently started his own company, Real Entertainment, which just released his first CD.
Kyle shrugged his shoulders.
"I look at it as doing it all for my mother," the 17-year-old said. "I use it as fuel to do all I can with my music."
Kyle cannot remember the last time he spoke to his father. Alan Jameson, who once worked as a jail guard for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, moved back to his parents' country, Bolivia, in 1993. The family has suspicions he may have been involved but no evidence was ever found to link him to the disappearance.
Today Kyle has grown into a gregarious, mature, deal-talking youth who will attend community college this fall because of his grandparents' wishes. But his true interest is his music.
No one has prodded Kyle to write, produce and promote his music, which he categorizes as "backpack" hip-hop, a less angry version than the popular gangster genre of today.
He's self-taught, studying the origins and impact of hip-hop, from Grandmaster Flash to Kanye West. An uncle helped fund the production of his first 500 CDs, entitled Mission: Bring Hip-Hop Back, under his performer name, Kaycee aka "The Dime."
He's already marketing his work in cyberspace.
"The Internet and My Space is huge right now," the teen said. "There's a disadvantage being so young since I can't go to clubs."
Listeners can check out samples of his songs, such as In Love (baby), and buy ring tones for $1.99 on his Web site: myspace.com/kayceethedime.
"Hip-hop has many different images, but real hip-hop could not be defined by 99 percent of the artists on the radio these days," Kyle writes on the site. "Jay-Z, Common, Nas, Game, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Kanye West, these are just a few of the modern day artists who continue to keep real hip-hop in the airwaves of the radio during this generation. Next on the list is Kaycee."
After school, he usually heads back to his bedroom, filled with pin-ups and basketball stars, to sit at his Dell computer, where he created his beats and rhymes with programs such as ProTool and Free Loops.
He has dissected popular hip-hop artists such as Jay-Z, hoping to learn the secret of their success.
"I learned (Jay-Z) has got an awkward flow, there's no rules to his flow and he says what's on his mind," Kyle said. "But you've got to be yourself, original, and that's what I'm doing."
He would like to attend Tempe's Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in the fall, but because he doesn't have enough money, instead will start at a community college.
His grandmother wants him to get a college degree. If Kyle turns into a music mogul later, so be it.
