Missing Without A Trace

by Rider, Tanya

  We all stopped breathing again when Colleen asserted, at the end of her speech, that though it was 1995 when Morgan disappeared, she still believed that Morgan was out there. Morgan needs to be brought home, said Colleen, who has not given up the search because “a mother knows.” All of our missing, she said, deserve to have that search.

  She is right, and I am with her. Just months after that training program, this belief was renewed once again with the astounding recovery of Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped at age eleven and recovered at age twenty-eight.

  Regardless of circumstance or odds, every missing person deserves to be searched for, and we—American law enforcement—need to follow up, to search, to investigate, and to bring to bear any and all available resources and technology.

  One problem is that we must balance this imperative with the rights of people who want to go missing, to start a new life or to escape those who have harmed them in the past. Missing Without a Trace explores these issues. In the process, we hope to create discussion and bring changes and improvements in these areas.

  Though you will likely feel much anger through the book, Missing is not a witch hunt. It was impossible to capture the story of Tanya Rider and leave out the anger she felt while left to rot in the ravine. Trying to put their lives back together, Tanya and her husband have also experienced much helplessness and hopelessness in the years after the accident. Still, they press on, and Tanya continues to express incredible faith in God to move her and her family on to a better place.

  More important than anger is that any of us could become one of the missing at any time. Any of us could say goodbye to our sweetheart or our child and have them disappear without a trace. If you knew in advance that you were going to go missing sometime in the next forty-eight hours, or you knew that someone you couldn’t live without was about to go missing, what would you do to prepare? What could you do? We wrote Missing Without a Trace to prepare you and those you love for the unthinkable, because you can increase your odds of surviving and making your way back to your family, and you can increase the odds of getting your child back. Missing provides concrete suggestions to help you and your loved ones remain safe—and to know what to do when you aren’t.

  By watching the success of people who have navigated trauma and adversity, we learn to handle it ourselves. Though Tanya Rider remains in much pain today—and she faces many challenges—she is a survivor. Conducting the research for this book, my team and I contacted many professionals who called Tanya a miracle. I think she is a miracle, but there were physical and psychological components that helped her make it to that eighth day. I believe anyone can learn from her, take that information and apply it to their own challenges and traumas. Thus, I have designed Missing to provide you with practical information to help you and your loved ones to survive tragedy, and also to help you believe again in the miracle of the impossible through the eyes of an indomitable survivor.

  —Tracy C. Ertl

  PROLOGUE

  Trapped—Again

  By Carole Lieberman, M.D.

  When Tanya Rider’s SUV, which she’d fondly named Skywalker, went over the embankment on a rural road outside of Seattle, it ruthlessly trapped her inside. But the feeling of being held prisoner in a nightmarish world that she could not control was all-too familiar to her. The cold metal carcass that entombed her in the ravine by the side of the road replicated the walls of the cold loveless homes that had entombed her as a child. And just as no one ‘saw’ her or felt her pain when she was a little girl, because they were too self-absorbed to look, no one ‘saw’ her this time, either, despite the missing-person reports and the countless cars that passed as the hours ticked by. Indeed, she was trapped—again.

  Tanya’s mother, Nancy, was very young when she met Randy, the man who would become Tanya’s father. Though her parents had picked up on warning signs that Nancy had missed, she married him anyway, despite their disapproval. Randy’s good looks and charm fleetingly concealed his dark side: drug addiction and a violent temper. Tanya was born in 1974, when Nancy was nineteen and Randy was twenty-one. As it turned out, when Tanya was a baby, he beat Nancy and their tumultuous marriage ended. Tanya’s grandmother quietly planned to move Nancy and Tanya across the country. The night before they left, Randy got wind of this. He stole the furniture that the grandmother had provided, as well as Tanya’s baby clothes and toys. According to Tanya, Randy’s problems with drugs then drove him to break into a pharmacy to feed his habit, and landed him in a federal penitentiary. The next time she saw her father, Tanya was entering adolescence. She had not been given a choice to see him sooner and she had desperately longed for him.

  Living with her mom was like living in a house of horrors. Nancy, lonely and miserable, turned to different men and nightly parties, where drugs and alcohol were served. Sometimes, Nancy hosted these parties at home. Other times, she went to the men’s homes and taught Tanya, at a young age, to make sure to lock the door while she was left home alone.

  There was never adequate food in the house. “My whole childhood was about starvation,” she recalls. Growing up, her diet consisted of Froot Loops, Pop-Tarts, chili and rice. When Tanya’s grandmother gave her money for doing chores, Tanya used it to buy food. If her mother cooked, which was rare, it was because Nancy’s latest boyfriend was there. “My mother gave me dirty looks if I came out when her boyfriend was there, or when she was having a party,” Tanya says. “So I spent lots of time in my room with my Barbies.”

  Nancy continued choosing ‘bad boy’ types who beat her, just as Randy had done. One man, who was her boyfriend for eight years, was repeatedly abusive. At times, Nancy and Tanya had to flee from him in the middle of the night. Tanya recalls being in the car, alone in the dark, while her mother knocked on doors, asking people if they would let her use their phone to call the police. Then, Tanya and her mother would sit in the car, waiting for the police to come and arrest the boyfriend. As he was being handcuffed, he screamed, “Tanya, don’t let them take me away!” Each time, he’d leave for a while, but then he’d come back. Tanya tried to tell her mother that these men weren’t good for her, but her mother didn’t listen.

  To soothe herself, throughout her childhood, Tanya would dream of her father. She’d tell herself, “I bet I have the greatest dad out there. He’s gonna find me one day and take me away!” The first discussion Tanya remembers about her dad threatened to smash these dreams, when she was six years old. Nancy and her boyfriend (the one who lasted eight years) were in bed. Tanya had a nightmare and came running to her mom for comfort. Nancy’s boyfriend, apparently annoyed that Tanya was disturbing them, told her that her father was in prison because he’s a very bad man. Still, to get through the real-life nightmare of her childhood, Tanya held on to her dreams of her dad, believing that he would rescue her one day.

  When she wasn’t neglecting Tanya, Nancy was pulling her hair, kicking her, throwing her against a wall, and beating her with a belt. Her mother told her not to cry, or it would make it worse. Tanya looked a lot like her father, and this triggered her mother’s feelings of rejection and anger towards him, which Nancy displaced onto Tanya. “I blocked out a lot of it,” a downcast Tanya explains.

  As a child, Tanya also dreamed that someone took away her mother, because she couldn’t understand how her mother could be so many different personalities. If Tanya had a cold, Nancy was nurturing. But, other times, Nancy, herself, was still a little girl who would not grow up. She was dependent on others, including Tanya. Yet, with her boyfriends, Nancy was all about make-up and being sexy. This was all very confusing to little Tanya.

  Elementary school was tough. Tanya recalls that she was always picked on because she was an easy target, from her clothes to her obvious insecurities. She was jabbed in the leg with a pencil in class and kicked at the bus stop. Tanya, being the victim of abuse at home, invited kids to abuse her, as if she were wearing a sign.

  Junior high was no better. Tanya continued to be picked on
but, now, in more insidious ways. For example, someone once passed her a note, pretending to be a popular guy asking her out on a date. She went up to him after class and he laughed at her because he hadn’t sent the note.

  When Tanya was young, her maternal grandparents were loving substitute parents. But, they traveled a lot and she could not rely upon them to rescue her from all the neglect and abuse. The weekends she was able to be with them, they treated Tanya like a princess, making her breakfast and spoiling her with lots of Barbie dolls and other indulgences. But this only further infuriated Nancy, who was jealous of all their pampering.

  Tanya’s mother had warned her not to tell her grandparents about Nancy’s boyfriends and her partying, threatening to beat Tanya if she dared speak of it. Finally, when Tanya was twelve or thirteen, unable to withstand it any longer, she told her grandparents about her mother’s abuse. Her grandfather swiftly took her home so that Tanya could show him the belt her mom used, and then took her to Child Protective Services. They ordered Tanya and her mom into counseling. This prompted Nancy to call Randy, who had gotten out of prison, built a painting business and remarried. Nancy was in trouble, so she decided it was time to bring him back into the picture.

  Nancy called Randy, inquiring—out of the blue—if he would like to have Tanya come live with them. This seemed like a wonderful idea to Tanya. She had visions of a real family, a comfortable home, dinners… a normal life. “I could be a kid,” she thought. So she decided to live with her dad. And she did, for one-and-a-half-years, from twelve or thirteen years old until she was fourteen or fifteen.

  But whereas living with her mom meant complete neglect, living with her dad meant every move she made was wrong. Although her father spoiled her with expensive things from the mall, her perfectionist stepmother treated Tanya like Cinderella, making her clean house and do chores. She was very afraid of them. When Tanya accidentally broke something while she was cleaning, her father’s face got beet red and he yelled at her that she was “slime.” Another time, he threw down a chair and threatened to cut off her long hair, which he did, ostensibly because her hair products were costing him too much money. It was another way to show her that he was in control. His displeasure and yelling was a frequent occurrence.

  Tanya’s stepmother couldn’t have children. She was afraid that Tanya would take her father with her when she returned to Washington, and that he would return to his first love, Nancy. So her stepmother never missed an opportunity to complain to him about Tanya. She read Tanya’s diary and eavesdropped outside her therapy sessions, exposing Tanya’s most personal thoughts, such as the reason why she refused to call Randy “Dad”—because he was never around during her childhood.

  Since Randy’s brother had starved himself to death, Tanya wasn’t allowed to close her door. As a teenage girl, she found this very awkward and uncomfortable. She was even told how long she could be in the shower. Tanya tried her best. She was a straight-A student, but this wasn’t enough for them. She had to be in honor classes. The social worker from Child Protective Services was still in contact with her, but Tanya couldn’t tell her how things really were at her dad’s house because her calls were being monitored.

  Still, this was a time when Tanya began to flourish. Now in eighth and ninth grade, she became a top student and others looked up to her. She played violin and was involved in the drama group. But her overprotective father and stepmother interfered, restricting her from acting in the school play and from going on a school trip to see the space shuttle.

  After a year and a half, it was agreed upon that she would visit her mother for summer vacation. Her father was afraid she’d stay there, so he wouldn’t let her take her clothes with her when she left. When Tanya got home to Washington, her mother was being very sweet, and this contrasted with the strict rules she’d been made to obey at her dad’s. Her mom convinced her to stay longer. But, when her father heard this, he told Tanya in no uncertain terms that she could either come back right then or not at all! She chose the latter.

  It was the summer before tenth grade. At first, life with mom was better than before. Nancy had gotten a steady job as a Boeing secretary, as well as a settlement from a car accident, so they were able to move from low-rent subsidized housing into a better apartment near the high school that Tanya wanted to attend. In high school, Tanya was an honor student, belonged to the Honor Society and Future Business Leaders of America, and had friends.

  But her mom was still gone every night, coming back in the morning to get ready for work. Nancy didn’t bring guys home anymore, now that Tanya had blossomed into a beautiful teenager. She was jealous of her daughter and didn’t want to have to compete with her. Sometimes, Nancy would be incoherent and, soon, she became abusive again. She bit Tanya and threw things at her. This time, Tanya let people know. Sometimes she stayed with friends. Once, when Tanya ran away, her friend’s mother called the police to report the abuse. Tanya became depressed. She started missing school and losing friends, who told her she was dragging them down.

  During the tenth grade and into the first half of eleventh grade, Tanya had a boyfriend named Steven. They were never intimate, but dated a lot in groups and had fun. Then, one day, a girl who had a crush on Steven played a nasty trick on Tanya, hoping that it would make them break up. She told Tanya that another boy, on whom Tanya had a secret crush, wanted to go out with her. She goaded Tanya into calling him and essentially asking him out. They went on only one date because he was pining after some other girl and wasn’t into Tanya. When Steven found out, he was devastated. He dumped Tanya and wouldn’t even talk to her. This is when Tanya’s severe depression truly set in.

  Sometime during her junior year, her grandparents thought it would be best if Tanya came to live with them for a year, from approximately age sixteen to seventeen. This meant she had to transfer to a different high school, which she recalls as an unhappy place. Steven visited her at her grandparents’ and invited her to the eleventh-grade dance at the high school they’d both attended, but the romance was never the same. Tanya went from straight A’s to becoming a recluse. She tried to push herself out of bed because her grandparents were growing increasingly hurt and worried. Hoping to lift her spirits, they paid for a class trip to visit historical sites on the East Coast.

  But, eventually, Tanya went back to living with her mother and started missing more school because Nancy didn’t seem to care. She just kept giving Tanya notes to excuse her absences. At around this time, as Tanya recalls, doctors took a scan of her brain, diagnosed her with depression, and started giving her pills that made her feel weird. She then went to a psychiatrist who put her on antidepressants that at least helped her get up in the morning and go to sleep at night. She also went back into therapy with the social worker, to whom she’d been referred years earlier, after CPS had investigated the abuse. Tanya financially depended upon the state to support her treatment. But they sent the checks to her mom, who used them for rent instead.

  Because her depression was so severe, Tanya thought that she was physically ill. She missed so many days of high school that she almost was not graduated, even though she had passing grades. Her psychology teacher, who was one of the teachers in whom she’d confided about her mother’s abuse, took her under his wing and she got her diploma in June 1992. For graduation, her grandparents bought her a car, allowing her to choose between a used Honda and a new Geo Metro.

  Tanya notes that she inherited her depression from both of her parents. Her mother was adopted and unable to trace her biological parents. However, Nancy, herself, was depressed. Randy was able to trace his biological parents and found a long stream of drug abuse and alcoholism in his family.

  Tanya attributes her strength, as an adult, to having had only herself to rely upon in order to survive her childhood. Growing up, when dark thoughts clouded her mind, she would try to put herself in a happier place. She’d envisioned running away with her father, whom she fantasized as being heroic, or running into the wo
ods to get away from her mother.

  One day during high school, when Tanya was riding in her mom’s car, she started talking about looking forward to going to college. Suddenly, Nancy got the evil look on her face that Tanya recognized as signaling the personality that was violent. Tanya got out of the car and Nancy tried to run her over. Tanya attributed this to her mother’s anger and jealousy over her grandmother helping Tanya to start college.

  She began studying at Green River Community College, taking classes such as the History of Art. Tests showed that she would make a good psychologist. But, she was stuck living with an absentee mother and trying to hold a job at the same time. She started missing classes.

  She left Green River and went to a different community college because this one offered a class that she had failed in high school. She wanted to retake the class because she’d felt bad about it. She also took a Spanish class because she wanted to make up for what she’d missed. Tanya wanted to finish whatever she had left unfinished, so that she could get back to her original plan. She’d long dreamed of going to the University of Washington and becoming a psychologist to get a deeper understanding of her family.

  By the time Tanya reached her late teens, her experiences with men throughout her childhood—from her dad to her mother’s boyfriends—had left her fearful of them. The thought has occurred to her that one or more of Nancy’s boyfriends may have sexually abused her. If so, she has blocked out these memories and she is glad of it. But, many other painful and frightening memories persist.

  In February 1993, Tanya met Tom Rider, the man whom she would eventually marry. He was twenty-four and she was eighteen. Tanya was attending community college and working at a telemarketing job where Tom worked in a row in front of her. One of the other girls was trying to ask him out but he only had eyes for Tanya. To discourage the other girl, Tom passed Tanya a note. Tanya hadn’t noticed him and she was stunned. Tom was very nervous when they began to converse, and he asked her to a party. As she remembers it, “The little child inside of him was asking me out.” It was love at first sight.