Tara Calico's (missing from NM) mother Patty Doel died June 2006
earthage
Joline Gutierrez Krueger: Patty Doel waited for Tara until the day she
died
By Joline Gutierrez Krueger
Albuquerque Tribune Reporter
June 9, 2006
Every girl, every woman, everyone who rode past on a bike was always
Tara Calico.
Nearly 18 years since the freckle-faced 19-year-old failed to return
from a bike ride near her Rio Communities home, and still it was always
Tara.
Her mother, Patty Doel, imagined it was Tara, anyway. She always
believed Tara would return on that neon pink bike, would have survived
whatever snatched her up that warm September 1988 morning.
"Tara was always coming back," said her stepfather, John Doel. "Patty
was looking for Tara right to the end."
The end came May 11. Patty Doel, 64, died of complications from a
series of strokes in Port Charlotte, Fla.
They moved there nearly three years ago to a home John built on the
water just for Patty. It was her dream home. It was a new start, but it
had been agonizing to leave.
There was always the chance Tara would come back to the family home on
Brugg Street, southeast of Belen, two miles from where bike tracks and
remnants of the cassette tape she was listening to that day were found.
"If she were to come home, I could not ever tell her we gave up on
her," Patty told me then.
Tara, then a very organized and active University of New Mexico
sophomore, had gone off the morning of Sept. 20, 1988, like she always
did for a 17-mile bike ride along an empty stretch of N.M. 47.
She worried about another flat tire delaying her plans for a tennis
match with a boyfriend at 12:30 p.m.
"If I'm not back at noon, come get me," she told her mother.
Patty Doel left the house at 12:05 p.m. to look for her.
She looked for nearly 18 years.
The Doels organized search parties, sought media attention from local
newspapers and national shows including "Oprah," "America's Most
Wanted" and "48 Hours."
They were deputized so that they could conduct their own
investigations, mailed out 200,000 fliers and photos of Tara, contacted
law enforcement agencies around the world, prayed.
The case of Tara Calico became one of the most infamous missing persons
cases in the nation, long before Elizabeth Smart, Chandra Levy or
Robbie Romero.
And Patty Doel became a force of nature, hurling all her grit and
passion into a heartbreaking search that her husband said eventually
contributed to her failing health.
"She wanted, she needed to make a change, to put all this behind," he
said in a phone call from Port Charlotte. "So we moved here."
For two years, they made a go of letting go in Port Charlotte. But
neighbor Linda Killinger said Patty could never completely do that.
"She never gave up hope that Tara would return," she said.
A year or two after the move, the strokes came, each one taking another
piece of Patty Doel. Her legs, her speech, her swallowing. She
communicated by a message board until her loss of cognitive abilities
made that impossible, too.
"We spent our golden years going to the doctors and the hospitals,"
John said.
Patty, a once-hardy woman now whittled down to 94 pounds, spent her
last days looking out onto the waterway near their home. Each time a
bike rider would pass, her disintegrating mind thought: Tara.
"I'd have to try to explain to her that it wasn't Tara, that it was a
person too old or too young," John said.
Two months ago, FBI agents came around to take another blood sample
from Patty. The sample will be analyzed for its mitochondrial DNA
sequencing then stored in the National Missing Persons DNA Database
should Tara ever be located, dead or alive.
Patty had always refused to get rid of all Tara's Christmas and
birthday gifts that accumulated in the years since the disappearance.
Back in New Mexico, the gifts were kept atop Tara's bed.
The gifts are still waiting in Florida.
Tara would be 37 now. She is still missing. And now, so is her mother.
Kris Baker
"earthage" <eartha...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1157230822.6...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
>
> http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/nw_columnists/article/0,2564,ALBQ_19856_4762524,00.html
>
> Joline Gutierrez Krueger: Patty Doel waited for Tara until the day she
> died
> By Joline Gutierrez Krueger
> Albuquerque Tribune Reporter
> June 9, 2006
Thanks, Patty. That's a heart-breaking end to a sad story.
I don't know what would be worse: giving in and "knowing" that your child
was dead, or faithfully buying those presents every year, in
constantly-unrequited hope.
Kris