Missing Without A Trace Read Free

deserves to be searched for, and we—American law enforcement—need to follow up, to search, to investigate, and to bring to bear any and all available resources and technology.
    One problem is that we must balance this imperative with the rights of people who
want
to go missing, to start a new life or to escape those who have harmed them in the past.
Missing Without a Trace
explores these issues. In the process, we hope to create discussion and bring changes and improvements in these areas.
    Though you will likely feel much anger through the book,
Missing
is not a witch hunt. It was impossible to capture the story of Tanya Rider and leave out the anger she felt while left to rot in the ravine. Trying to put their lives back together, Tanya and her husband have also experienced much helplessness and hopelessness in the years after the accident. Still, they press on, and Tanya continues to express incredible faith in God to move her and her family on to a better place.
    More important than anger is that
any
of us could become one of the missing at any time.
Any of us
could say goodbye to our sweetheart or our child and have them disappear without a trace. If you knew in advance that
you
were going to go missing sometime in the next forty-eight hours, or you knew that someone you couldn’t live without was about to go missing, what would you do to prepare? What
could
you do? We wrote
MissingWithout a Trace
to prepare you and those you love for the unthinkable, because you
can
increase your odds of surviving and making your way back to your family, and you
can
increase the odds of getting your child back.
Missing
provides concrete suggestions to help you and your loved ones remain safe—and to know what to do when you aren’t.
    By watching the success of people who have navigated trauma and adversity, we learn to handle it ourselves. Though Tanya Rider remains in much pain today—and she faces many challenges—she is a survivor. Conducting the research for this book, my team and I contacted many professionals who called Tanya a miracle. I think she
is
a miracle, but there were physical and psychological components that helped her make it to that eighth day. I believe anyone can learn from her, take that information and apply it to their own challenges and traumas. Thus, I have designed
Missing
to provide you with practical information to help you and your loved ones to survive tragedy, and also to help you believe again in the miracle of the impossible through the eyes of an indomitable survivor.
    —Tracy C. Ertl

PROLOGUE
Trapped—Again
    By Carole Lieberman, M.D .
    When Tanya Rider’s SUV, which she’d fondly named Skywalker, went over the embankment on a rural road outside of Seattle, it ruthlessly trapped her inside. But the feeling of being held prisoner in a nightmarish world that she could not control was all-too familiar to her. The cold metal carcass that entombed her in the ravine by the side of the road replicated the walls of the cold loveless homes that had entombed her as a child. And just as no one ‘saw’ her or felt her pain when she was a little girl, because they were too self-absorbed to look, no one ‘saw’ her this time, either, despite the missing-person reports and the countless cars that passed as the hours ticked by. Indeed, she was trapped—again.
    Tanya’s mother, Nancy, was very young when she met Randy, the man who would become Tanya’s father. Though her parents had picked up on warning signs that Nancy had missed, she married him anyway, despite their disapproval. Randy’s good looks and charm fleetingly concealed his dark side: drug addiction and a violent temper. Tanya was born in 1974, when Nancy was nineteen and Randy was twenty-one. As it turned out, when Tanya was a baby, he beat Nancy and their tumultuous marriage ended. Tanya’s grandmother quietly planned to move Nancy and Tanyaacross the country. The night before they left, Randy got wind of this. He stole the furniture