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The Club, by Robert Cooke |
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When I first met Tim Miller, director of Texas EquuSearch, he
told me my wife Janet and I are now in a special club.
It's a club no one wants to join. It's a club of sorrow and
grief. It's the club of parents and families of missing children.
The club is full of emotions. There is anger at the person who took your loved one. Frustration exist from trying to convince law enforcement your daughter did not leave on her own. In our case, there is additional frustration because we were turned down by more than two out of every three agencies because Rachel was 19 when she disappeared, two years older than most agencies accept. For you see, in the missing person world, the value of a human life decreases at age 18. Many sleepless nights occur in the club. When you are able to sleep and you awake, you wake up to a reality far worse than any nightmare. The guilt is overwhelming. Why was I not there to protect her? Why didn't I teach her how to protect herself? I am her father; it was my job to protect her. The worst feeling of all is the helplessness. What can I do? What haven't I done? We've posted thousands of flyers and passed out bumper stickers and buttons, but nothing has brought our daughter Rachel home. Well, I say it's time to reduce the membership drive for this club. It's time to teach our kids to be more aware of their environment and how to protect themselves. It's time to keep sexual offenders in prison and if they are paroled, monitor them closely. We need to train law enforcement to better differentiate between those who left on their own and those who might have been abducted. We need to have alerts in place that cover all ages of missing persons. We need to bring our missing loved ones home and put the lowlife animals who take them in prison and keep them there. copyright@2002 Robert Cooke |
