temporary field headquarters so many young women missing one woman determined to find them there s a story to her too. a young woman lucky to b alive. for a lot of people that would be the end to police work. so she searched the numbers grew the families hurt. she says i have some ba news for you under a desert sky a secret waited. this is not happening missing women forgotten by almost everyone but her. i have always felt they wer going to be together if you find one you ll fin them, all. sometimes ida lopez simpl can t wait for sunday. sometimes in the middle of her work week the albuquerqu detective feels a pressing nee for spiritual solace and divin guidance the fall of 2005 was one o those times. it was a time when a siniste force seemed to be snatching women off the streets of new mexico s largest city. and the devoutly religious detective knew she needed al the help she could get i think it s somebody who s very organized i think he s been preying on
and nights and weekends playin steel guitar with his countr 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. shortly after her 14t birthday michelle valdez gav birth to a baby girl she named angelica so you were being a fathe all over again father all over again
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 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 remembered moments like tha sustained dan and drove him to continue his lonely search for michelle then in july 2005, about fiv months after dan had first reported michelle missing, h got a call from a detective wh had only recently been assigne michelle s case. a detective named ida lopez. i thought ida being a polic officer was awfully small. short lady but other than that it seeme that, you know, that she was o the up and up and that she was doing doing what she could, in her power, and the time tha she had to go out and out t the streets.
family was at the mercy of the police department bureaucracy. what d the police tell you? she didn t want to be found and i can understand it a.p. doesn t just deal with missing they deal with all kinds for a long time the new 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 commo 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 an everybody else would have star of stepped up their game a little bit if that had been th case here. yeah, that did cross my min numerous times but you know, you have to have faith in your law enforcement. if you don t have faith in you law enforcement to treat everybody equal, then what d you have what you have in da valdez s case is a search yo do yourself. as spring turned to summer tha year, dan, his ex-wife, and hi daughters plastered flyers wit
we weren t as close. because of the drugs she d come over and steal my things or, you know, i would see how upset it would make my dad. so i would tell her, you know, mean things. before long michelle valdez stopped showing up in he father s videos. sometimes because she avoide the camera other times because she simply didn t show up she knew that there was events at the house becaus she d call and ask if she coul borrow $25, she was hungry o whatever 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 makin contact with her and seeing he in person. dan may have had th patience of job. but by 2004 camille, the tag-along little sister, had had enough when michelle asked dan if she