BETHLEHEM - It's been more than a year since the King family talked to their daughter Amanda.

Unlike missing children cases — or, most recently, the case of College of Saint Rose student Connor Trapatsos, 17, who went missing in October and was found dead last week — the disappearance of 29-year-old Amanda King has gotten little attention.

"You get a lot more attention and I guess concern when it's a child, but when it's a full-grown adult, let's face it, it boils down to an adult makes their own decisions," said Arthur King of Delmar, Amanda's father. "But I really think that Amanda, even though she was an adult, everything was out of her control. She was just going down a path she just couldn't get off of."

Problems started while Amanda was a high school student experimenting with drugs, King said.

It quickly escalated when she started doing heroin — an addiction she was fighting up until the day she was last seen.

Amanda's story is one becoming more and more common as young people from suburban areas fall victim to the rising heroin epidemic.

"It doesn't seem like there's anywhere to hide from it," King said. "My children went to Bethlehem High School. I thought that was as far away as we can keep them. Obviously not."

On Oct. 16, 2013, Amanda was seen leaving Conifer Park, a treatment center in Glenville, with another person.

She was 28, 5 feet 3, with blue eyes and blonde/brown hair. Amanda wears glasses, but had lost hers.

Anyone with information is asked to call Albany police at 462-8039 or Glenville police at 384-0135.

There were sightings of Amanda in Albany throughout November 2013, but she hasn't been seen since.

"After a few weeks of not hearing from her, I realized something was wrong," King said. "No matter how bad things got, she'd come back to the house for a day or two."

The family is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to her whereabouts.

Albany police, who didn't get the case until after she was sighted in the city, said Amanda was involved with a rough bunch of people, many of whom also are heroin addicts.

The difficulty with dealing with heroin addicts is that they have memory problems, so most interviews yield no answers to her disappearance, police said. They continue to look for her.

Nearly two weeks before she went missing, Amanda called her father for a ride, something she did often.

"She always called me, usually every week. Very often when she called me it was because she needed money, needed a ride, needed a favor," King said. "I was the go-to guy. I was the last guy she could count on."

He picked her up in Albany at what looked like a crack house and drove her to Conifer Park for court-mandated treatment, King said. Amanda had been arrested a few times for drug possession. After 10 days in the center, Amanda left.

"They couldn't keep her," said King, who spoke with her case worker afterward. "Amanda decided she had to leave. She just couldn't go through the treatment."

Amanda had tried going through detox programs as well as counseling, but nothing seemed to work, King said. "She was just simply so badly addicted. She simply could not escape it."

But the last time he saw Amanda, she looked different, King said. "I got the impression, quite frankly, that she had all but given up hope of ever getting clean again."

The Kings, along with some of Amanda's friends, have been putting up posters and posting on a Facebook page they created called Missing Person-Amanda King.

Some calls have come in, though nothing substantial, King said.

Her 29th birthday was Nov. 17.

It's been particularly difficult on her younger sister, King said.

"We're trying to keep our hopes alive, but it gets harder every day," he said. "Originally I was hoping we'd find her wandering somewhere. Now I just want to know what happened to her."

King has attended a forum on heroin addiction and now accepts that his daughter had a disease.

"Looking back on it now, I think I felt angry, disappointed. I've got to admit that I simply was in a different place back then," he said. "I think I felt very much that it was all her fault... that she could pull out of it if she wanted."

"I've come to the decision that it's just an insidious disease and some people just can't recover from it," King said, holding back tears.

"If I could speak with Amanda I would tell her to come home. I would say we love you and we will help you to get better," he said.

kclukey@timesunion.com • 518-454-5467 • @KClukey_TU