but you know, you have to have faith in your law enforcement. if you don t have faith in your law enforcement to treat everybody equal, then what do you have? reporter: what you have in dan valdez s case is a search you do yourself. as spring turned to summer that year, dan, his ex-wife, and his daughters plastered flyers with michelle s picture all over central avenue asking anyone who d seen her to call the albuquerque police department. at night dan drove through the war zone. sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. looking for michelle. it was real hard because you know, i d be circling the block or whatever, see somebody that may appear to be the size of michelle, a small person, and go around the block two or three times and me wondering who they were as well as them wondering who i was. it had to be brutally
more proactive. and editor didn t say a whole lot, and i thought, well, i ll write it and we ll see what happens. the resulting column which for the first time publicly connected the missing women on ida s list with the west mesa bonefield hit the front page one month after the first bone was found. the response was amazing. i think because for the first time we had started to put faces on these women and we had explained to the citizens of albuquerque that there weren t just two women that were missing. there were whole bunches of them. suddenly families who had once felt isolated in their agony now felt a communal bond. and at the center of it all was dan valdez. and i said, well, let s gather these families together and get to know them. let s get to be each other s support system. let s exchange phone numbers. an impromptu memorial came to life alongside the wall that
difficult to think of michelle living that kind of life. definitely. definitely. it was not the way that her mother and i raised her. reporter: those were long nights, filled with bittersweet memories of michelle the way she used to be, before the drugs took over. and thoughts of rare moments together before she went missing. she came over to the house one day, and i d given her a few dollars, and she stood up. she said, well, dad, i m going to run. i said all right. and she said she went up to put her arms around me, and i hugged her. and she said no, dad. squeeze me tight. squeeze me like you ve never squeezed me before. and i got her and i gave her the biggest hug a father could ever give his daughter. reporter: remembered moments like that sustained dan and drove him to continue his lonely search for michelle.
relatives to the west mesa grave digger are convinced there could still be someone somewhere who knows something. because, they suppose, all those earlier rumors about the women being abducted, killed, and dumped in the desert had to have started somewhere. was it all hot air, or did someone with knowledge of the murders mix a kernel of truth into those rumors? we re not the only family that got a call saying that their, you know, sister, daughter was murdered and buried out there. somebody was trying to send a message at some point. could never trace it back. it led them to a dead end. though both dan and camille valdez believe michelle s killer is still alive, dan prefers these days to dwell on the things he knows for sure. i love you, michelle. i miss you, hon. that he once had a daughter named michelle who was the light of his life. that once she was lost and that now she s found. and we will see justice
reporter: then came the teen years. when life started coming at michelle valdez fast and furious. by then dan and michelle s mother were divorced, and dan was raising michelle and camille alone while working days at the juvenile detention center. and nights and weekends playing steel guitar with his country band, cimarron. dan tried to keep a watchful eye on his girls and even took them to work with him at the juvenile detention center to show them where careless mistakes can lead. some of it seemed to take. some of it didn t. at 13 michelle became pregnant. i was devastated. but what can you do? you can t be with them 24/7. all you can do is bring them up, nurture them, show them love, attention, appreciation. and sometimes they make a mistake. and sometimes they make the wrong turn or a mistake.