Placentia : Reward Announced for News of Missing Girl

The parents of 14-year-old Wendy Rachelle Osborn, the girl who disappeared last week after she apparently left home for school, made a public plea for her return Tuesday and announced that a reward fund has been established.

“Our most important wish is that she be in a safe place, and that doesn’t mean our house only,” Jack Osborn said at a news conference at the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center in Orange, headquarters of a group that helps in searches for missing children.

Wendy was last seen at her home in north Placentia about 8:10 a.m. Jan. 20. She had missed her ride to Tuffree Junior High School, where she is an eighth-grader, and had told her parents she would walk to the school, which is less than two miles from her home, her mother, Carolyn Osborn, said.

She is described as 5 feet, 3 inches tall and 95 pounds, with shoulder-length hair and brown eyes. She wears round prescription glasses with a star in one lens and has braces on her teeth. The morning she disappeared, she was wearing a pink polo-type top with black checks, pink knit pants and white high-top shoes. She was carrying a pink duffel bag and a red leather purse, her father said.

On Tuesday, the FBI joined the investigation of the disappearance, Placentia police said.

Anyone with information is asked to call Detectives Dick Macklin or Rick Miller at (714) 993-8255 or the Adam Walsh Center in Orange at (714) 547-1361.

The center has set up a reward fund for information leading to the girl’s return, Pamela Harris-Oedekerk, a spokeswoman at the Adam Walsh Child Resource Center, said. Anyone wishing to contribute should make the check out to Wendy Osborn Reward Fund, Account No. 222-730146. The donations should be sent to First Interstate Bank, 1396 N. Rose Drive, Placentia, Calif. 92670.