michelle needed to be rescued. it's a time critical situation. every second that you waste is a second that she's hurting. we had to find her. narrator: saturday afternoon, 18 hours after michelle vanished, michael and a group of michelle's friends met with inspector fraser ritchie at the hayward police department. we had about 10 or 15 family members and classmates and friends at the police department. they were all talking about how responsible she was, how out of character this would have been for her to just get up and leave. did you try to call michelle or anything? yes. get a response? yes. i sent a message out, this is inspector ritchie of the hayward police department. you need to get a hold of me right now. yeah. i got the response within several minutes, saying that my phone is dying. i need to find a charger. i'm having car trouble. narrator: the same sort of response received by michelle's friends and family, who had now decided based on those weird text messages