\
I took this picture earlier in the day, before all of that
transpired…before Ruth went missing.
She knew that I had been snapping pictures all over the
place with my new Cannon. “Daddy! Take my picture in the sunshine!” she begged.
Ruth was excited that she had gotten her own room, 9 steps up a wooden ladder
and into the loft of our old house. Skylights overhead allowed the sun to wake
her in the morning and let her drift off under the moon and stars at night.
There were no outside lights to cloud the view. That house was surrounded by deep woods.
More than 180 years old when we bought it, our house had
survived 29 owners who, like me, valued their privacy. It sat in a clearing the
size of a baseball diamond encircled on all sides by dense scrub nailed down by
many acres of forests, owned by the Ashburn Timber Company.
The Ashburn Timber Company no longer had any interest in the
trees though. Not anymore. The value was in the land itself, and they knew it.
We owned five acres, surrounded by their many hundreds. None of it had been cut
or used for any purpose as far back as any locals could remember. It was all
money in the bank drawing interest as the suburbs continued to spread out from
Washington, D.C. like ripples in a pool.
Every ripple brought more developments and made the land
more valuable.
So when we bought the place in the 1980’s, nothing was going
on. We had no neighbors other than oak, poplar, and pine with that thick layer
of undergrowth.
We had a sunny Saturday morning when Carla and I pulled our
two cars up near the house to wash and vacuum both at the same time. I ran a
long extension cord from the front hallway out to the big shop vac sitting
between our cars.
Ruth was playing with Ohio the Wonder Dog and swinging in
the hammock between two huge Cedars next to our parallel cars.
Carla and I were working on hers, she leaned in one side and I did the same on the other, passing the noisy vac hose back and forth to suck the floors clean.
With that finished and ready to start in on my car, we took
a break.
“Where’s Ruth” we asked each other at the same time. She and
Ohio weren’t in the yard.
I went around back as Carla went inside to look. Two minutes
later we were both in the front yard again yelling her name as I ran down our
winding gravel driveway to the dirt road we lived on.
No Ruth.
That’s when we both went into panic mode. Carla and I had
been leaning down in her car, low by the floor for only a few minutes, but the
vacuum drowned out all outside noise. If Ruth had walked down to our mailbox on
the road, we wouldn’t hear her go. If a car had driven up, we wouldn’t have
been able to hear it either.
We knew there was nowhere else she could have gone. Our house
was surrounded by thick brier, impenetrable. The only way out was down the
winding gravel driveway.
Ruth was missing. Ruth was missing.
Ruth had been snatched.
I immediately called the police, telling them to hurry.
Thankfully, they did.
I remember standing in the front yard, telling the cops
everything I told you. Carla was hyperventilating. For me, it was all unfolding
in slow motion.
The police did their own search of the house. We walked it
together. The cops saw my automatic and semi-automatic rifles mounted on hooks
over the stairs. They opened the big cedar chest that Grandma Maverick had
painted and pushed aside several pounds of pot I kept in there.
No Ruth.
I knew that the vast majority of child “abductions” pointed
back at the family itself and was eager for them to clear us and see that they
needed to concentrate their efforts on finding Ruth “out there” not here.
We had to move, fast, I pushed and pleaded. They agreed.
Radios crackled as roadblocks were set up all over the
county. A bloodhound showed up with his handler. He took Ruth’s scent from the
bunny suit that she often slept in.
Carla was shaking, inconsolable. I was still watching a
movie, incredulous, everything in slow motion, disbelieving.My ears perked up each time the radios barked in unison from
the multiple squad cars pulled hurriedly onto our front lawn.
When would we hear that hey caught the kidnapper?
Several hours passed. A helicopter was brought in. It
hovered low and loud directly over house. We stood there in a dust storm of
chaos and desperation.
The chopper started flying in ever-expanding concentric
circles, widening the air search, until it was out of sight and could no longer
be heard.
Five hours had passed. I was unable to console Carla and
didn’t know how we would be able to move forward. The worst-case scenario kept
trying to paint horrific pictures in my head. I didn’t want to know.
Then a radio cracked.
They spotted Ruth! She was lying in a
small clearing about 1/4th mile north of the house. Minutes took hours as we
waited for the copter to land.
That's when we heard the news: Ruth was OK! Wet pants, dirty
& tired, but OK!
They were flying her to Loudoun Hospital. Carla and I jumped
into my car and started racing there with a police escort.
Running with a nurse and a cop to room 223. There she was.
Sitting happily on a hospital bed, cleaned up and dressed in a new teddy Bear
gown they had given her and drinking chocolate milk.
Mild hypothermia, mostly from dehydration, a few scratches
from crawling through the brush behind our house in places where only a rabbit
could go, but she was fine. She had been entertaining two nurses who had young
children themselves. They understood that they were temporary Moms to the
subject of one of the biggest manhunts in Loudoun County history.
That was it. Missing for six hours, a happy ending. We found
out later that the helicopter had recently been fitted with a new piece of
high-tech equipment, a heat-seeking device that could spot a squirrel even
through dense underbrush. They picked up Ruth’s body heat, a little girl as a
red glow on a green screen. That’s what saved the day
The manpower, the roadblocks, an overpaid bloodhound who
mostly chased his own tail, the helicopter with that expensive lifesaving
device…it all must have cost the county tens of thousands. For us? No bill, and
no mention of the illegal weapons or my even more illegal pounds of pot.
Every one of those cops was calm, efficient, sympathetic,
and super-professional. I had come along at a time when cops were called pigs.
That forever changed it for me. They were more than heroes that day and my
gratitude has never diminished.
Ohio the Wonder Dog and Ruth’s constant companion had been
no help at all though. Apparently, she crawled over, under around and through
the dense underbrush with Ruth, until she got bored and came back home
wondering what all the commotion in the front yard was about.
At least Ruth had a great day. An adventure much like Alice
down the rabbit hole, a welcome nap in the mottled sunshine of a distant
clearing, an exciting helicopter ride and two nice ladies who made a huge fuss
over her, that gave her a cool new nightshirt and, of course, lots of chocolate
milk.
No comments:
Post a Comment