Pop Rocks: One Of Our Boners Is Missing

Andrew Koenig, who played Mike Seaver’s best friend “Boner” on Growing
Pains, went
missing last week in Vancouver.

His sister, Danielle Koenig, said he was last seen Feb. 14
in Vancouver, where he was visiting friends, Zap2It reports. He was to have
flown out Feb. 16 but didn’t make the flight.

He’d been staying with Jenny Magenta, a burlesque dancer, since Feb. 10.
She’s been posting on her personal Facebook page since Friday about his
disappearance, and has commented on Twitter as well.

Celebrities, according to an earlier Zap2It article, including Alyssa
Milano and Sara Silverman, have been on Twitter and on blogs, spreading
the word.

There’s a “missing career” joke somewhere in all of this, even without the
Alyssa Milano assist, but I’m not quite a big enough asshole to make it.
Especially since Koenig appears to be the only teen actor on GP who
didn’t either turn into a child-star
cliche or a full-bore
wackaloon.

Koenig, as has been reported ad nauseum, is the son of Walter
Koenig, who played Chekov on Star Trek. He’s appeared in a handful
of movies since Growing Pains ended in 1989, worked on the “Never
Not Funny” podcast, and has — according to his parents — been suffering
from depression recently. Friends and family are obviously very concerned
for his well-being, and are spreading the word via Facebook, Twitter, and
blogs to assist Vancouver PD with the search.

I guess it’s the level of celebrity involvement that explains why this
is anything more than a minor blip on the evening news (Hal Sparks and Alyson
Hannigan are among the famous talking about Koenig’s disappearance), or why
anyone who doesn’t know the guy personally really cares. I keep seeing
updates from people who, and I’m going way out on a limb here, probably had
no previous idea if the guy was alive or dead. Now, folks are passing along
some Vancouver detective’s phone number in status updates as if their Aunt
Hilda, who only follows them on Facebook to get baby-picture updates, is
going to spot Koening out her back window in Levelland.

Sure, the theory is sound: the more people flooding the internet with
requests for assistance, the greater the likelihood someone not previously
aware of Koenig’s disappearance will be on the lookout. The guy’s lucky to
have that many people out there who care about his well-being. Shit, if I
went missing my own family would barely pause to breathe a collective sigh
of relief before scrambling to auction off my Spider-Man comics.

But in case anyone had forgotten, there are hundreds of people missing in
this state alone. Unfortunately for their families, they lack the celebrity
connections to get their child’s disapperance on Huffington
Post or MTV. It
takes slightly more effort than typing “RT @Alyssa_Milano”, but you can
always download the Amber Alert app
for your iPhone, or — if you live in the Houston area — go to the Texas Center for the Missing web site and
learn how to volunteer when there’s a local disappearance.

It isn’t Koenig’s fault that his Hollywood connections have elevated his
case any more than it was Natalee Holloway’s fault that the media love
pretty blonde girls. And I do hope he turns up all right, because it would
be a shame for anyone’s most enduring legacy to be playing Kirk Cameron’s
sidekick.