extra. i m craig melvin. returning to somebody s daughter, once again, josh mankiewicz. before february 2009, victoria chavez and michelle valdez had been virtually invisible to everyone in albuquerque except their families, their customers and detective ida lopez, who d had their names on her list of missing women. but for the most part the public didn t even know there was a list. the news media had shown little interest in the story when desperate family members had come to them asking for help. they wouldn t even put her picture on the news or nothing. that s all we really wanted, just to flash her picture real quick. reporter: of course, all that changed once bones started turning up on the mesa. a few years before the first body was found a colleague of mine and i had heard about a list of women that were missing. reporter: and as it turns
michelle had just turned 20. a milestone that was not lost on mother or child. mommy s not a grownup anymore i mean, a teenager anymore. reporter: no. in a sense michelle never was a teenager. and now on the cusp of young adulthood michelle looked gaunt. her face bore the kind of sores that suggested she d been hitting the crack pipe. when did you notice things were going wrong? i m guessing you noticed before anybody else. yeah. i noticed when she started seeing one of her boyfriends, you know. he opened up the door for all the wrong things. like? the drugs. the drugs. definitely. reporter: dan knew about the drugs and twice got her to agree to enter rehab. but michelle never showed up. increasingly there were run-ins with the law. michelle had already been busted
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. reporter: shortly after her 14th birthday michelle valdez gave birth to a baby girl she named angelica. so you were being a father all over again. father all over again. i was only 8 years old and becoming an aunt, you know. it was tough. but once once, you know, we had that bond, me and angelica, it was nice. i enjoyed it. reporter: at 14 most kids rightfully think their best years are ahead of them. high school, college. career. that was not the track michelle valdez was on.
daughter. every life is a mystery. not just because of what happens but because of what might have been prevented, missed, or altogether avoided. in the whole wide world. reporter: such was the mystery of the women on detective ida lopez s growing list of the lost. it s a mystery their families still struggle to understand. there s a dad who had a calendar. every time he saw her he marked the date down. gave her 20 bucks. maybe he knew where the money was going to go. but he saw his daughter. and that didn t take that part away, that she was still somebody s little girl. i think they re trick candles. reporter: the name, the face, belonged to michelle valdez, one of the first women on ida s list. dan valdez, her father, had reported michelle missing six months before ida got the case. he was the guy who kept the
her job, and she realized that these women all had families. they ve got parents and grandparents, and some of them actually had children of their own. and she wanted to be able to provide them with some answers. reporter: in addition to victoria chavez and michelle valdez, the others from ida s list were cinnamon elks, julie nieto, veronica romero, monica candelaria, and doreen marquez. a lot of people said they were drug addicts and prostitutes. well, if they were, so be it. i didn t choose their lifestyle. but you know what? the first thing is they were human beings to begin with. reporter: commander feist, who tried to keep the local press at arm s length during the excavation, finally allowed them to cross under the yellow tape and onto the crime scene, along with crews from america s most wanted. the tv show america s most wanted was also at the crime scene today filming for next weekend s episode on the west mesa mystery.