Missing Without A Trace
Read Missing Without A Trace Online
Authors: Tanya Rider
MISSING
Without a Trace
8 Days of Horror
Without a Trace
8 Days of Horror
Tanya Rider and Tracy C. Ertl
with Carol Lieberman, M.D.
Missing Without a Trace:
8 Days of Horror
Copyright ©2011 Tanya Rider and Tracy C. Ertl
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, except for passages excerpted for the purposes of review, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information, or to order additional copies, please contact:
TitleTown Publishing, LLC
P.O. Box 12093 Green Bay, WI 54307-12093
920.737.8051 | titletownpublishing.com
Edited by Katie Vecchio
Cover design by Erika L. Block
Interior layout and design by Erika L. Block
PUBLISHER’S CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Rider, Tanya.
Missing Without a Trace : 8 days of horror / Tanya Rider and Tracy C.
Ertl. -- 1st ed. -- Green Bay, WI : TitleTown Pub., c2011.
p. ; cm.
ISBN: 978-0-9823008-6-2
1. Rider, Tanya. 2. Adult child abuse victims--Psychological
aspects. 3. Traffic accident victims--Psychological aspects.
4. Survival after airplane accidents, shipwrecks, etc. 5. Missing
persons--Investigation--Washington (State)--King County.
6. Missing persons--Investigation--United States--States. I. Ertl,
Tracy C. II. Title.
HV6762.U6 R53 2011
363.2/336--dc22 1101
Printed in the USA by Thomson-Shore
first edition
printed on recycled paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is dedicated to NCMEC,
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
(and Adults)
and Morgan Nick, a beautiful six-year-old girl.
Morgan is missing and we are waiting for her to come home
.
—Tracy C. Ertl, publisher and co-author
This book is dedicated to hope…
…Hope that no one else will ever suffer an ordeal like mine.
…Hope that you and your loved ones will have faith, no matter
what you face.
…Hope that my story sheds light into the darkness of agencies
that should protect and serve us.
…Hope that money will never again come before duty.
…And hope that this book forewarns those who suffer the ordeal
of a missing loved one
.
—Tanya Rider, co-author
Chapter 3: Your Loved One is Missing
Chapter 4: What if YOU Are the One Who is Missing?
Chapter 5: Dr. Carole’s Couch: Overcoming Trauma
Missing Without a Trace
would not have been possible without the continual support of my family. My children—Andrew, Christine and Bradley—believed in the importance of
Missing
from the beginning. Bradley accompanied me to Rock Island where I wrote part of the manuscript. He, along with my brother, Stephen, provided sanctuary in the evenings when I desperately needed to relax and debrief from intense writing sessions.
My publicist, Michael Wright, who is vice president of Garson & Wright Public Relations, was the guiding force behind this project. Without him, there would be no
Missing Without a Trace
. Wright gave his vision for the book and infused his energy at times when we felt we had nothing left to give to the partnership. I will always be deeply grateful to him for believing in TitleTown’s ability to produce the book and in me to write it with proper care for the heart of a survivor.
The TitleTown team was invincible. Katie Vecchio not only edited
Missing
but also stepped in as a significant ghost voice when my publishing responsibilities swallowed additional writing time. Designer Erika Block captured the essence of a missing person with an undeniably brilliant cover and interior design. Both Block and Vecchio worked long, grueling hours. Research assistants Jessica Engman and Katie Stilp were invaluable in gathering extensive information on the missing person process. Without their expertise, the book would be incomplete.
Brown County Public Safety Communications, a multi-jurisdiction emergency-response center handling fire, police and EMS calls in Green Bay, Wisconsin, is my second family and has provided me with a backdrop of understanding and passion for survival topics unprecedented by any publisher in the industry today. My 911 family has waited in anticipation of this title as they know writing and publishing has always been my other love and my destiny.
I thank my friends for accepting my absence while I was trying to bring voice to Tanya Rider and the plight of other survivors like her.
My associates at the Association for Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) have been supportive in my chase of this project and brought me in direct connection with the NCMEC staff, who give their lives to the missing and those who are searching for them.
I extend my deep gratitude to the men and women of law enforcement who dedicate themselves to the pursuit of the lost, taken and missing. We need you.
I thank Dr. Carole Lieberman, who accompanied me to Seattle, Washington, to work with Tanya Rider in the hopes of bringing greater understanding to the process of being a survivor. There is no timeline to healing and we must be patient in its pursuit. That, perhaps, is the greatest lesson in
Missing
.
Lastly, I thank Tanya Rider for trusting me to help her tell her unbelievable story of survival against every odd. Tanya, you are a true survivor and it is my honor to have learned your story and been given the chance to share it with others, both as your co-author and publisher. God bless you.
—Tracy C. Ertl
No matter what, my husband Tom is the one person in the world who has always been there for me—and always will be—and I want to thank him for so much. He can be a pain but he is
my
pain, and I thank him for never giving up on me! To help him get through his anger, he wrote for therapy, and he has shown me how to vent constructively. It was Tom’s idea to write about my story and our situation.
I’d like to thank many people in the public for your love, concern and prayers for my recovery as well as for your cards and letters of encouragement. I extend a special “Thank you!” to the person who went down into that hole that was my home for eight days to bring me my books and papers. You were very kind and considerate to do this and I will never forget your thoughtful, anonymous act. I’ll always be thankful.
So many people stepped up to help in any way they could and I am so grateful to all of them. I thank several nurses, doctors and other caregivers who went above and beyond to save my leg. I even want to thank the nurse who threatened me with a nursing home! More than anyone else, she motivated me to get home and convinced me that I could not live under the control of other people!
Most of all, I thank God. If not for my faith in Him, I don’t know where I would be now. Without His help, I could never have survived for eight days. Without His protection from the pure horror, I would probably be insane and lost to the world. Without His love, I would probably not have had the strength to cope with my injuries. I thank God for keeping me alive and, for the most part, whole.
—Tanya Rider
First, I want to thank my wife, Tanya. Thanks to her pure spirit and iron will—and through the grace of God—Tanya fought her way back from death’s door. Through everything that she had to endure, her courage never wavered. She fought to keep her leg as well as her life, and has had to live through many trials that would have destroyed a lesser person. I know that, if I had been trapped in that ravine, I probably would have been dead long before they found me, and I am
so
grateful that Tanya returned to me.
While she survived for eight days without food or water, her body began the process of shutting down; her cells diverted the precious fluid that pumped through her veins, began to consume her muscles to produce energy, and damaged her kidneys. By the time she was finally found, Tanya was well past the point of any rational hope for survival.
My employer at the time—Gary Racca, owner of SoundBuilt Homes—did so many things to support us and to make our lives easier in those first few weeks after Tanya was rescued. I would never have asked anyone in the world for the things that Gary and my coworkers at SoundBuilt did for us, and they did it all without my asking—even offered up their vacation days to help cook or clean for Tanya when she got home. Throughout the ordeal, they were the best people I could have had around me when I needed them the most. I thank all of them from the bottom of my heart.
I also want to offer a heartfelt thanks to my friend Adam, who took care of our dog for those first few weeks, allowing me to stay at the hospital with Tanya full time. And words can never express my gratitude to all of the people who pitched in to make life a little easier for Tanya and me.
