Missing Michaela

To my daughter ...

Michaela, if you are out there, you can see on these pages, on so many pages, that I have never stopped looking for you and I have never stopped loving you.  There is nothing that has happened in the past that cannot be overcome with the deep love that we will always share.

So please, come home.

We are living in Nana's house.  If you remember where that is and can get there, just come.

You can contact me immediately by sending an e-mail to

missingmichaela@gmail.com. 

It will come right to my cell phone, and 99% of the time I will get it in seconds.

There is a telephone number you can call, which isn't always answered, but if you leave a voicemail it will go to my cell phone as well, so I will get it and can call you back immediately.  that number is

(510) 995-7085.

And don't forget, you can always call 911, or walk into any police department. Tell them to contact Inspector Lampkin at the Hayward Police Department.

Just come home.  In the days after you were kidnapped, I'd stand in the doorway gazing down the street, looking for your little blonde head bobbing towards home.  For weeks I wouldn't leave the house because I was waiting for you to call, and when I did finally have to leave, I got a cell phone and put call forwarding through -- and this was before cell phones were commonly used.  It has been over twenty years now, and my waiting has changed over those years, but it has not ended.  I am still here, and still waiting for you to come home.

Love you forever,

Mom

Dear Michaela ...

Michaela, I am writing letters to you on my blog.  I just want to be able to stay in touch with you, and if you can't come home to me for some reason, then this is my way of bringing home to you.  Just go to my blog, and in the right hand column you will see a list of "labels."  Click on "Dear Michaela" and it will take you to all my letters to you.

My blog is at www.thewonderingheart.blogspot.com

Love you forever,

mom

 

September 17, 2009

Dear Michaela,

These last couple of weeks my hopes to see you again, to hold you in my arms, have soared higher than they have in many years.  But I have to tell you, hope is a very heavy burden to bear.  At first, it is light as air and lifts you to float on the clouds.  But as time goes on and on and on, it gets heavier and heavier and harder and harder to bear.

I know you know this.  I've thought often about how you were sure you would be rescued.  You knew Trina had seen you, you knew the police would be looking for you, and I'm sure you were as certain that your rescue was imminent as I was.  It has been one of my most painful thoughts, of you losing that hope, of you becoming resigned to the fact that help wasn't going to come.

I guess it is something we both experienced in our own way.

So I've thought, if you are still alive, that you might e reluctant to break free of your situation and come home.  You might be afraid.  You might be bonded to the people you are with.  I've thought that one of the main reasons Jaycee would have stayed with her abductor is because of her children, that staying with them and protecting them would be more important to her than her own freedom, more important than her mom, who she knows would be missing her.

But I'm begging you, please, please to break free. If you are alive, please, please come home.  I'm sure you remember, when you were little, I would tell you to please be careful and take care of yourself, because if anything happened to you it would break my heart.  And I have always thought that even in your own terror, you would remember my words and you would be worried about me, too.  Well, my heart IS broken, and it aches more every day.

So I'm asking you.  Even if there is a reason that you wouldn't do it for your sake ... would you please do it for mine? 

I love you, Michaela.  Even though you are a woman now, you know that as long as you're living, you will always be my baby.

Please, come home.

Mom

Over the years, we have had several people who have contacted us and have claimed to be Michaela.  There are many ways Michaela can verify her identity.  Aside from almost ten years full of shared memories, we had a family code word.  Michaela would also know the story behind the above photograph.