A Strangers Persistance Saves 3 year Old Girl
Instinct told her something was wrong
Thursday, January 26, 2006
By ANDY NETZEL
Thursday, January 26, 2006
By ANDY NETZEL
DECATUR, Ga. -- So many coincidences took Tracie Lee Dean to an Evergreen, Ala., gas station. So many little mistakes prompted her to keep moving forward -- to investigate a case that law enforcement disregarded.
She said she felt like she was acting crazy, but her heart told her to keep going.
Ten days later, two Conecuh County residents are in jail. Jack Wiley, 58, is charged with two counts of raping the 3-year-old girl Dean saw in the Shell station. He's also charged with one count of sodomizing a 17-year-old boy. Glenna Faye Cavender, 40, is charged with abusing the young girl.
Dean has trouble explaining what it was that made her decide that when the Evergreen police didn't want to investigate, she would take the case on herself.
She spent late nights searching missing-children Web sites and later scolding the Web site operators when she found out they hadn't given her tip to police.
She repeatedly called officers asking them to look deeper. She drove more than 300 miles back to Alabama to look at video surveillance in between the end of her work day and the next morning.
What was it that made her keep digging deeper?
"I don't know," Dean said Wednesday night. "Hindsight, I don't know. It's just one of those things that grabs ahold of you. I followed my instincts. I followed my heart."
Jan. 15, a Sunday, Dean was driving home to Georgia from Diamond Head, Miss., where her mother Bobbie Yaniga was dealing with the remnants of her home, leveled by Hurricane Katrina. Dean wanted to look at the wreckage of the house one more time to make sure everything of value was out before a construction crew cleared the lot.
Only one thing remained, an unbroken Christmas ornament. It was an angel.
Dean was running low on fuel in Evergreen, Ala., and she pulled off to fill up at a Shell station. When she walked into the store, she saw a little girl wandering the aisles alone. A little red cowboy hat was on her head. The girl looked at least 5 or 6 years old -- not the 3 years old that she was.
A hard life was on her face.
Dean said hello, and the girl pranced off. She came back, though and lingered near Dean. She asked the little girl where her mother was. Did she work at the gas station? A gruff looking man walked over and asked the young girl if she was looking for a new mommy. But it wasn't a cute comment, Dean said. He sounded mean.
When Dean left the store, the little girl pushed on the door to open it. "She wanted to leave with me," Dean said.
Dean knew something was wrong. Bad wrong. She felt it.
As she left the parking lot, she circled around and entered the license plate number into her cellular phone. She called 911. The dispatcher called back to make sure she gave a proper description of the car, because it didn't match. It was a late-model Chevrolet Suburban, Dean insisted, not a 2001 Honda.
The dispatcher called back a few minutes later and said the police looked into it, and everything was fine.
It turns out the tag number Dean relayed was a digit off. She wouldn't know that for a week. However, the dispatcher's dismissive tone made Dean wonder if her report was being taken seriously.
When she got back to her Decatur, Ga., home, she checked her cell phone. Only 14 minutes went by between her report and the news that everything was fine.
The next day, Dean started scouring Web sites, looking for missing children. She found a young girl that looked just like the little girl with the distant eyes in the store. Dean hit "print." This was her girl. The name: Emily Elizabeth. The man had referred to the little girl in the store as Elizabeth. It had to be her.
Another mistake. The girl wasn't Emily Elizabeth. But Dean didn't know that. The coincidence kept her going.
Emily Elizabeth was missing from Madison, Ohio. After calling the toll-free number to report her sighting, Dean called the northeast Ohio police station, asking to speak to the officer.
She got hold of the officer on that Tuesday, but he didn't even ask for her name.
Come Wednesday, Jan. 18, Dean called again. She left two messages. In the first, she insisted she wasn't crazy, and she really did see this girl. In the second, she asked for a call back that she never received.
She was discouraged. But her father and her uncle, both retired police officers, told her to keep going.
She said she tried to put it out of her mind. She tried to stop thinking about the little girl.
The thoughts wouldn't leave, though. She kept coming back to it.
"I would be so mad if I was a mother who had a missing child," she said. "I had information, and no one wanted to do anything with it."
On Thursday, she called Alabama to try to track down the officer who investigated her initial call.
She called the Shell station to ask if she could look at surveillance tape from that Monday. The manager agreed, and that was all Dean needed to head back to Alabama after work.
Three hundred miles later, she found out she had called the wrong Shell station. She kept on driving down Interstate 65. She got off at every exit looking for the gas station.
When she found it, the clerk called the manager, who agreed to come in and show Dean the tape. As they congregated, a member of the Conecuh County Sheriff's Department came in.
Deputy Bryann Davis walked straight behind the store counter. He wanted to hear this story.
Finally, Dean said. Someone cared.
Davis was on fire, Dean said. He cared as much as she did about this little girl. It was 11:30 p.m. on a Thursday night. Dean had to be at work the next morning, 300 miles away, but she had finally gotten someone to care.
Davis followed up on the case, and by Friday afternoon, he made an arrest. By Wednesday, the two people were charged.
"It was just in my heart," Dean said. "It was a God thing. I just knew. I felt it with my heart."
Dean said the young girl is still on her mind. "There is no happy ending to this story," she said. "A 3-year-old girl getting raped does not have a happy ending. It may be a better ending, but not a happy ending."
Dean is the general manager of the Jim Ellis Audi dealer in Atlanta. She spends her life selling. She was having trouble selling this one, but she finally did it. She sold someone on her gut feeling about this little girl.
"In sales, you have to meet eight 'No's' to meet a 'Yes,'" Dean said.
She got her "Yes." And now, she hopes, the little girl will have a chance at life.
