When Loved Ones Became Missing Persons

Early on the morning of Dec. 11, Francine Williams received a telephone call from her brother. The call was about their 55-year-old father, Henry Foster, who had not arrived to escort his grandchildren to their Southeast San Diego school bus stop.

That was not like him. Foster was sometimes confused and often depressed since a 1984 stroke and a divorce a few years earlier, but he didn’t miss appointments. Concerned, Henry Foster Jr. drove to his father’s home and went inside. There was no sign of trouble, but there was also no sign of his father.

Henry Foster was missing.

Just three days later in nearby La Mesa, Lydia Peterson placed a similar phone call to the police. It was nearly midnight and Peterson had not seen her husband, Paul, since he had driven off at 9:30 a.m. that Sunday.

That was not like him. Peterson, 56, suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and occasionally became disoriented, but he had always found his way home.

This time, though, Paul Peterson was missing.

For the next 12 days, Francine Williams, 36, an elementary school principal from East San Diego, and Lydia Peterson, 49, a La Mesa store owner, lived the same nightmare as they searched for two middle-aged men believed lost in San Diego County.

Although they have met only briefly since they were thrown into the same ordeal, Williams and Peterson tell remarkably similar stories of the hope, despair and frustration of searching for a loved one who has vanished without explanation. They have learned almost identical lessons, and they believe that publicizing their experiences may save another family the same heartache.

There is one difference between the two episodes. Paul Peterson was found alive Dec. 26 near a footbridge in Tijuana. Henry Foster’s corpse was found in a Scripps Ranch canyon exactly one month later.

Henry Foster was last seen alive the evening of Dec. 10, when he finished bowling with friends at Leisure Lanes in Lemon Grove. Investigators believe that he went home from there about 9 p.m. because his son found Foster’s bowling clothes in the house the next morning.

A man who rents part of Foster’s home told police that Foster’s car was in the driveway about 1 a.m. on Dec. 11 but that it was gone by morning.

But where was Foster? The question troubled Williams, who knew that her father was not the type to go off on an unannounced trip. An outgoing, gregarious man before he suffered a massive heart attack in 1978, Foster was well known in Southeast San Diego as a successful contractor. He rarely spent time alone away from home.

“He usually tells me if he’s going somewhere,” she said. “He tells me to keep an eye out on the house. If he’s depressed, he calls. He’s a talker, not a loner. He couldn’t stand to be by himself.”

Williams began to look for her father, confident that finding him would be a simple matter.

“You’re thinking, ‘It’s all right, there’s not going to be any problem,’ ” she said of those first few hours of searching. “We’ll call people and we’ll find him. You’re sort of worried, but you don’t want to go overboard.”

Foster’s physician ruled out the possibility that the stroke or medication would cause him to become disoriented enough to become lost. Foster did tend to forget things since the stroke in 1984, but his way home was not one of them.

“He was oriented to person and place and time,” said Dr. Arnold Berlin. “His main problems appeared to be associated with memory. . . . This is not a man that is going to get lost.”

But friends and relatives had no clues as to Foster’s whereabouts. When Foster did not show up by Friday night, Dec. 12, Williams went to the police.

Police throughout the city were notified by radio that Foster and his vehicle were missing, said Fred Dreis, the missing persons detective for the San Diego Police Department. They were told that Foster’s could be in jeopardy.

Police showed concern throughout the search for Foster, Williams said, but she believes that they could have done more. For example, she said, people who called with tips about Foster sometimes reached only a tape recording that asked them to leave a message. One man who tried to report information at a San Ysidro police substation was turned away and told to call the missing persons investigator, she said.

Williams was stunned when she was told Friday evening that Dreis would begin looking into her father’s case when the bureau reopened Monday.

“The whole missing-persons bureau is closed down on weekends,” she said. “I’m very concerned about that. I think as a city, we all should be concerned about that.”

The issue of police response to a missing person report recently surfaced in connection with the slaying of 20-year-old San Diego State University student Cara Evelyn Knott, who was strangled and tossed from a 75-foot-high bridge on Dec. 27.

Her father, Sam Knott, has complained that San Diego police declined to take a missing-person report from him when his daughter was late arriving home that evening, citing a department policy of waiting until a person has been missing for 24 hours. The San Diego County Grand Jury is examining the situation at the request of Assemblyman Larry Stirling, (R-San Diego).

California Highway Patrol Officer Craig Alan Peyer, 36, was arrested Jan. 15 and charged with murder in the Knott slaying.

Police say they have insufficient resources to put into missing-persons cases--especially when they concern adults, who are not breaking any laws simply by dropping from sight. (As a result of these two cases, a volunteer group is being formed to aid police in such searches.)

Moreover, because Foster’s car had not been found, police had no place to begin their search. He could have been anywhere.

Dreis estimated that 98% of the 1,025 people reported missing in San Diego last year left on their own, fleeing unhappy marriages or searching for new lives. They are “primarily those who cannot cope with whatever problems they feel they are facing and basically are runaway adults,” he said.

Most cases are solved very quickly. Missing people return, make phone contact, leave notes, are declared AWOL by the military, or turn up in hospitals or jails. Sometimes their bodies are discovered. Only four of last year’s cases remain unsolved, Dreis said.

Although state law requires that a missing 11-year-old be registered on a nationwide computer network within four hours after the report is filed, it leaves police almost complete discretion in the case of a missing adult. They need not submit a report to a state registry until an adult has been missing for 45 days.

However, a state law that took effect in January, 1986, requires police to accept missing-persons reports on adults and children “without delay.”

In essence, then, each adult missing-person case requires a judgment call by police. In suspicious or unusual circumstances, police investigate--if they have leads.

Police involved in the Foster and Peterson cases said that both men’s medical problems made it quickly apparent that they were probably not “adult runaways.” As there were no leads, most of the responsibility for active searching fell to relatives.

As a relative, “you would be able to cover a certain area better yourself,” Dreis said. “You know the habits. You know the friends. You know the relatives. And you can get answers a lot quicker than waiting until a missing-persons detective such as myself gets a report, evaluates the situation and then starts doing what I can do.”

Lydia Peterson went to bed Sunday, Dec. 14, after giving a report to a La Mesa detective who came to her home. For the first time since she and Paul were married, she had no idea where he was or what condition he was in.

Much of Paul’s ordeal is still unknown because his disease has blotted it from his memory. Lydia believes he was shopping, lost track of his truck in a parking lot, panicked and began to walk home. The truck has never been found.

Paul, a dedicated runner, was in good shape. He had walked home before and could have accomplished it again. But Lydia believes he headed the wrong way and never regained his bearings. Because he has Alzheimer’s disease, he probably would not stop to plot the best way out of his predicament. Worse, he had left his wallet, containing his identification and money, at home. He had change in his pocket but was unable to phone for help. Shy and embarrassed, he would be reluctant to approach anyone for aid. He would be confused, scared and indecisive. He would walk until he was exhausted.

“I felt so sorry for him,” Lydia said. “I knew he was out there unable to handle the situation. Knowing he was cold and hungry and wanting to come home, I felt sorry for him. I just felt awful that this was happening to him.”

Paul was last seen at Grossmont Center about 4 p.m. that Sunday. The couple’s store, The Coffee Merchant, is located there, and although Paul was no longer able to work, he often spent time chatting with employees and visitors to the mall.

After checking Grossmont Center and San Diego’s Kona Marina, where the couple has a sailboat, Lydia contacted police and went to sleep. She went to work Monday morning, believing there was nothing for her to do. She now realizes that was a serious mistake.

“Had I known what I know now, I would have been out there driving the streets between here and El Cajon, up and down and all around,” she said. “I thought I had turned it over to the police. I felt, ‘The police are out there and he’ll be walking around, and they’re going to see him.’ ”

Like Williams, Lydia believes that the police could have done more. In particular, she wanted guidance about whom to call and where to search. A pamphlet of instructions would have been very helpful, she said. Now that Paul has been found and is regaining his health, Lydia is writing one herself.

But as the week began, a detective told Lydia that she would feel helpless until the media picked up the story of her husband’s disappearance.

On Monday evening, Lydia waited at home for word from the police.

“I still did not know what to do,” she said. “I stayed home and waited. I thought, ‘He’s going to be back in a day.’ So I didn’t even call my friends and tell them. I should have been on the phone to my friends, to the church, to everyone.

“They (police) do make you think there’s nothing much you can do about it.”

Like Henry Foster, Paul Peterson had disappeared with a vehicle--or so the police believed. That precluded a search in any specific area, said La Mesa police Lt. Carl Wirtz. But all county agencies were notified of Paul’s disappearance and of his medical difficulties, Wirtz said.

Contrary to popular belief, “there is no formal or informal waiting period,” Wirtz added. “Each case has its own facts. The facts of the case tell us whether the case is beginning to be suspicious or not suspicious.”

Leah Saunders, one of the Petersons’ three daughters, said that the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department waited seven hours before sending a search team when Paul was believed to have been sighted in Lakeside later that week. Her pleas were rebuffed by a secretary, who did not believe that the situation warranted notifying her superiors, Saunders said.

“They didn’t care about anyone,” she said. “They were just there to answer phones and see that their bosses weren’t bothered.”

Capt. Ben McLaughlin of the Sheriff’s Department said that the message he received about a lead in the Peterson case was just an hour old and that secretaries would have given a message to other officers if it were urgent.

Saunders had similar feelings about La Mesa Police Department Detective Mike McElroy. As the days wore on, she became angry and frustrated with McElroy’s attempts to find her father.

“It was an unimportant case and he had better things to do,” she said bitterly. “He was too busy to deal with a missing person. He was always out of the office on another case.”

Francine Williams realized what she had to do almost immediately. She spent the weekend after her father’s disappearance contacting jails, hospitals, the county coroner and the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana. She also scoured the Tijuana race track, where her father liked to spend an occasional afternoon. She and other relatives searched the streets at night after work and all day on weekends. Newspapers and television stations picked up the story.

“You feel like you can just go and pick him up if you only knew what corner he was on,” she said. “You’re driving and looking and searching and making illegal U-turns when you see someone you think might be your dad.”

She printed flyers with Foster’s picture and description. But when the time came to distribute them, the enormity of the task became apparent. Just sending the flyers to all the churches listed in the city phone directory would require tremendous effort, she said.

“Being naive, you’re thinking, ‘I can do this. I can find him.’ Then you realize that this city is too big,” Williams said.

A cadre of volunteers from throughout the community began to assemble. Over the next few weeks, they combed canyons throughout Southeast San Diego, searched Tijuana and investigated backyards for a possible burial plot. They held a fund-raiser. They contacted churches and friends and relatives.

They distributed 12,000 flyers throughout San Diego.

On the Saturday after Foster’s disappearance, Williams and her husband found Foster’s car at the trolley station at Euclid and Martin Luther King Way. Curiously, it was not parked in a handicapped parking space although, because of his stroke, Foster had a handicapped card for the dashboard.

Still, finding the car was a good break, because it proved that Foster was not driving to parts unknown. It also reinforced the possibility that he had taken the trolley to Mexico.

“I was as surprised as anyone could be that he was found up there” in Scripps Ranch, Dreis said. “I was personally convinced he would be found in Mexico.”

With the leaflet distribution and the news coverage came reports of sightings. Williams said that searchers checked out 20 to 30 and Dreis checked out more, including a promising tip from a clerk who was certain that Foster had been at a grocery store in Hillcrest.

But the searchers found themselves chasing shadows. The reports were two hours old or three days old or a week old. Williams hoped in vain for someone to call saying that her father had just been seen.

“It was like a dog chasing his tail and never quite catching it,” said Lloyd Johnson, a private investigator who volunteered his help. He was “always out of your grasp. It was frustrating. Having to comb the canyons and never knowing what you’re going to find. Hoping that you’re not going to find him but also hoping that you will find him, so you’ll know what happened.”

Williams recalled: “In the back of your mind, you’re saying, ‘Is there something I could do that I didn’t do? Is there something we’re not seeing?’ ”

A week passed, then two. Still no sign of Foster. Christmas, a very important holiday in the Foster family circle, was the next day. Foster had never missed Christmas, even when he was very sick.

The uncertainty became worse than the thought that her father was dead, Williams said.

“I think it’s better to know,” she said. “Of course, you don’t want that kind of an end for anyone. But when you know, you can do the things that have to be done.

“My father knew he was going to die. He talked about it. When he had his stroke . . . he had made his peace with it. He wasn’t afraid.”

When Christmas passed, Dreis became convinced that, if Foster was found, he would be found dead. As December became January, Williams was running out of places to check. She contacted the same officials again and again, but little had changed.

“You don’t want to really say that this is it,” Williams said. “You hold out a ray of hope that this didn’t happen. But you’re starting to prepare yourself. You’re starting to say, ‘I may never know what happened.’ ”

On Jan. 26, Williams learned of her father’s fate when a man walking his dogs found Foster’s body in a rugged Scripps Ranch canyon, far from anywhere he usually traveled. His wallet and jewelry were gone.

Because the body was so badly decomposed, coroner’s investigators could not determine the cause of death. But most people involved with the case believe that Foster was the victim of foul play. The police are investigating his death as a homicide.

Theories about Foster’s demise abound. Perhaps he met someone on the way home from the bowling alley who killed him, took his jewelry and dumped his body. Perhaps Foster had another stroke or heart attack while riding in his car with someone who panicked, dumped his body and left his car at the trolley station to throw off searchers.

No matter what happened, Foster’s life ended prematurely.

“At one time the man was riding high,” said Berlin, his doctor. “He had a number of people working for him. He saw himself as a success, and he was a success. He was a man with limited education who pushed himself up the ladder. . . .

“And then he’s killed. You could almost make a Greek tragedy out of it.”

Lydia Peterson continued to wait for the police to find her husband. “It wasn’t until Thursday--four days!--that I was calling people and saying, ‘We’re meeting at such and such a location, can you come out and help us search?’ ”

By then, friends had come forward with suggestions of how to begin. Television stations picked up the story Dec. 16. Volunteers printed flyers Dec. 17 and distributed them the next day.

Reports of sightings began to come in. The first good one placed him near a grocery store at Olde Highway 80 and Greenfield Drive in El Cajon. Searchers checked the area but were unable to find him.

On Dec. 19, after a report that Paul had been seen in a liquor store at Los Coches Road and Olde Highway 80 in Lakeside, an army of volunteers set up a command post in a mobile home in a nearby parking lot. Lydia paid more than $1,000 to send up a helicopter, with no results. Nearly 10,000 flyers were printed and distributed throughout East County.

“Volunteers and friends and total strangers were coming in and saying: ‘Where can we go? What can we do?’ ” Lydia said.

Searchers later found four neatly stacked soda cans near an old chair in an abandoned building. One was traced to the liquor store where Paul had bought a soft drink earlier in the week. But Paul was nowhere to be found.

Like Henry Foster, Paul Peterson seemed to be just beyond the grasp of his pursuers. They would rush to the scene of the latest sighting only to hear that he had slipped away.

Their efforts were not entirely futile, however. While looking for Paul, searchers found another Alzheimer’s victim who had wandered away from a nursing home and brought him back.

On the night of Dec. 20, Lydia received a call that Paul had been seen in the Parkway Plaza mall on Fletcher Parkway in El Cajon. The description fit, and the searchers rushed there.

When a coffee shop waitress asked Lydia whether Paul “used to work for Folger’s,” she knew her husband had been sighted. Coffee was a passion of Paul’s; he talked about it all the time, even before he bought The Coffee Merchant. Paul had been in the shop several times, where he drank glass after glass of water.

The command post was moved to Parkway Plaza, where searchers combed every corner that Sunday. But they were too late.

“We missed him again,” Lydia said. “We had literally hundreds of people in Parkway Plaza Sunday. The plaza was filled with our searchers. But not hide nor hair of him” was found.

From then on, the reports became more sketchy. “There were sightings coming in, but nothing solid, nothing definite,” Lydia said.

On Dec. 24, a woman called from the North Park section of San Diego. She was frantic. Paul was right outside her home, she said, and her husband was trying to detain him.

Scores of searchers, police cars and a helicopter were dispatched to the area. The woman, who identified herself as “Margaret,” called back twice more, each time with frenzied reports that Paul was nearby.

“In the afternoon, it hit us: This was a hoax,” Lydia said. “She managed to divert all that time and energy and money for a whole day.”

Leah Saunders said: “This woman, she’ll get her day you know where.” But there was a silver lining. “She kept our hope going so we didn’t quit (for another) day.”

By Christmas Day, Leah met briefly with a psychic who had offered her help. But she was getting ready to give up the search, despite volunteers’ desire to expand it to other parts of the county.

“I had come to the point the day after Christmas where, personally, I could not go on any further at this intense pace. I could not push it any further,” she said.

She didn’t have to. On Dec. 26 a newspaper reporter told them that Paul had been found.

Truck driver T.J. Shelley had sought help for a desperately ill American man whom he had seen lying in a fetal position near a footbridge on the Tijuana side of the border. The man was Paul.

“We were stunned,” Lydia said. “It just couldn’t be. We didn’t want to believe it because of the hoax that had been pulled on us.”

Paul was almost dead. He had lost 30 pounds and was so dehydrated that his tongue looked like a small white piece of paper, Lydia said. His feet and legs were very swollen. He was suffering from a blood infection.

“A few more hours and he would have been gone,” Lydia said. “He wouldn’t have lasted another night, certainly.”

But after a month in the hospital, Paul recovered and came home.

On Saturday, Jan. 31, Lydia and Paul Peterson had a barbecue at their home to thank the people who had led the search and Shelley, the man who had cared enough to get help for Paul.

“It was very touching, because when we sat around at the table, Paul thanked them all,” Lydia said. “He knew” what they had done, she said.

The next day, Henry Foster was eulogized at a memorial service that drew people from throughout San Diego to Trinity Lutheran Church.

Lydia Peterson and Francine Williams, the women whose lives were changed by the torturous searches for the two men, remember one thing most of all.

“The significant thing is that this could happen to anybody,” Williams said. “You read the papers and it doesn’t hit home. (But) you don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to have anything. Anybody . . . “