Family Seeks Help Finding Missing Son

Don Starkey set out last Thursday to finish a list of errands: buy school books, prepare lunch and finish some yard work. But his day somehow ran off course and now he’s missing.

Family and friends on Saturday plastered the streets of Westminster and Long Beach with about 400 fliers seeking the public’s help in locating the 22-year-old Long Beach resident, who is scheduled to begin studies at the Chapman University Law School in the fall.

“He wants to be a lawyer, and then become a judge,” his mother Terry Starkey, 45, said Saturday. “He’s a responsible, loving young man. This is not like my son at all.”

In a note he left his mother at their Long Beach home Thursday morning, Don Starkey said he was going to buy some textbooks at Chapman University in Orange and then return shortly to work on the lawn. He was never seen again.

Later that afternoon, the California Highway Patrol spotted Don Starkey’s 1978 Buick Skylark on the shoulder of the San Diego Freeway near the Springdale exit. Although unlocked, the car did not appear to be broken into or disturbed, police said.

“Radiator fluid was seen under the car, and his mother indicated that the car had a propensity to overheat,” said Westminster police Lt. Robert Burnett.

Perhaps Starkey had car trouble and he then went looking for help, his mother speculated. Whatever happened afterward remains a mystery.

Authorities said Starkey apparently had $400 in cash and took his backpack with him. They believe he was going to use the money to buy his books.

Investigators and a helicopter crew searched the area near the car for any evidence or even a body. Nothing turned up.

“There’s no indication of foul play, but it does seem suspicious,” Burnett said, adding that roughly 98% of the missing persons cases are usually solved.

Starkey is described as 5-foot-10 and 150 pounds. He has medium length sandy-blond hair, a goatee and a tattoo of two dolphins on his ankle. The Starkey family asks that anyone with information call Long Beach police or Westminster investigators at (714) 898-3315, Ext. 421.