that changed when michelle failed to show up for angelica s seventh birthday party. that day it fell to 15-year-old camille to fill in for michelle and act as mom. that christmas angelica opened her presents alone, with no sign of her mother michelle. i thought maybe she d turn up a few days later, a few weeks, or we d you know, she d call us. it was breaking angelica s heart that day when she wasn t there. reporter: in february, five months after michelle was last seen, dan went down to the albuquerque police station and formally reported his daughter missing. detective ida lopez, who would later make it her mission to find michelle and the other missing women, was on medical leave at the time. so in ida s absence the valdez family was at the mercy of the police department s bureaucracy. what d the police tell you? she didn t want to be found.
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. though dan continued to tape all the usual family functions. michelle s little girl angelica was now the center of attention. but on the periphery in offhand moments dan s camera also caught something else. the look and the unspoken despair that signaled the death of a young girl s dreams.
she was at you know, at a hurting spot. so i gave her the money. even though you knew even though i knew that it could be going for drugs. it was my gateway to making contact with her and seeing her in person. reporter: dan may have had the patience of job. but by 2004 camille, the tag-along little sister, had had enough. when michelle asked dan if she could move back home for a while, camille put her foot down. he was going to let her stay with us. and i remember telling him no. if she comes and stays, i m going to leave. i couldn t handle it. i remember that. i didn t even i didn t even want to be around it anymore. i was so tired of it. tired of seeing him hurt. so you told michelle she couldn t come over? i told michelle she couldn t come over. i took her to a friend s house and dropped her off there.
and i can understand it. a.p. doesn t just deal with missing. they deal with all kinds. for a long time the news would be full of stories about girls who were missing and everybody s looking for them. and one of the things that those girls all had in common was that they were all attractive and blond and white and didn t have any criminal record. and i guess i just kind of wonder whether police and everybody else would have start of stepped up their game a little bit if that had been the case here. yeah, that did cross my mind numerous times. 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
confidence that michelle would turn up alive was suddenly shaken one night when the phone rang at the valdez home. the caller on the other end of the line had heard something shocking. we had gotten a call from a family friend of ours that i grew up with, and you know, i pick up the phone and she s like, oh, my gosh, i m sorry about your sister. and i said, you know, what are you talking about? she said, michelle. michelle s michelle and cinnamon were stabbed and buried on the west mesa. did you know who cinnamon was? no. no. never heard of her before. did you ask her where she heard that? yeah. her aunt ran the streets, knew michelle, knew certain people, and they had heard it from her aunt. reporter: dan immediately called detective ida lopez with the tip. but she was unable to find the aunt or to pin down the source of the rumor. it was all just unverifiable