Kidnapped California Child Returns as Woman

Update at 1:14 p.m. ET: The Sacramento Bee reports that authorities have confirmed that the woman who walked into a police station is Jaycee Dugard, who was kidnapped in 1991 when she was 11. Authorities are planning a news conference at 6 p.m. ET.

"It's like winning the Lotto," said Dugard's stepfather, who said he remained under suspicion all these years.

A woman kidnapped 18 years ago from her California home has reportedly surfaced in Concord, Calif., the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Jaycee Dugard, who would be 29 today, apparently walked into the Concord Police Department on Wednesday, the Chronicle says. A news conference is scheduled for later today.

Two people have been taken into custody, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says.

The blue-eyed, blond 11-year-old was last seen on June 10, 1991, as she was walking to a bus stop in South Lake Tahoe. The Chronicle reports that her stepfather was watching helplessly from the family's driveway on a hill about two blocks away when a two-tone gray sedan pulled up and someone yanked the girl into the car and sped off.

Even though officers responded within minutes, no trace of the car or girl was ever found.

Dugard's mother was on her way from her southern California home for a reunion with her daughter, the Chronicle reports. We'll keep an eye on this.

Tracy Playground Dedicated To Sandra Cantu

TRACY, Calif. -- A playground built in honor of a Tracy girl who disappeared and was found dead earlier this year was officially dedicated at her elementary school Friday.

Volunteers and donors constructed the playground at Jacobson Elementary School in memory of Sandra Cantu. The 8-year-old disappeared March 27 from inside Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park. Her body was found a little more than a week later in a San Joaquin County irrigation pond.

"It's been over four months since Sandra left us, but she is definitely in our hearts. I know I think about her every day," Principal Cindy Sasser said. "Many have worked together to donate this beautiful playground ... to Jacobsen Elementary in memory of Sandra."

"Sandra's exuberance and smile will live on in the hearts and minds of its visitors, and she will never be forgotten -- not at all," Tracy schools Superintendent Jim Franco said.

Cantu's relatives were among those who turned out for the dedication ceremony. Her two siblings and friends from school were the first to play on the new playground.

R.I.P. Frank McCourt

It saddens me to learn that the great Frank McCourt, one of my favorite writers, passed away yesterday at the age of 78.

From a Timesonline article:
"Frank McCourt, the Irish-American author best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir Angela's Ashes that chronicled his impoverished upbringing, has died in New York. He was 78.

The bestselling author died from a metastatic melanoma, according to an executive of Scribner, McCourt’s publisher.

A schoolteacher who came to writing late in life, McCourt won acclaim with his poignant, extraordinarily bleak picture of a childhood growing up in the slums of the Irish city Limerick.
Angela's Ashes brought McCourt a 1997 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award and other honours. Millions of copies of the book were sold worldwide and it was adapted into a 1999 movie starring Emily Watson and Robert Carlyle. "

McCourt turned to his life in the United States for subsequent books, Tis and Teacher Man.
Born in New York City, he was the eldest of seven children born to Irish immigrant parents.
Angela's Ashes was an unsparing memoir that captured a feckless, drunkard father with a gift for story-telling. When not drunk, his father was absent, turning his back on a family so poor, McCourt wrote, that they were reduced to burning the furniture in their rented hovel to keep warm.
Already struggling when the Great Depression hit, the family moved back to Limerick, where they slipped ever deeper into poverty in the 1930s.

Three of McCourt's siblings died of diseases worsened by hunger and the squalor of their surroundings. McCourt himself almost died of typhoid fever as a child.

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all," McCourt wrote. "It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

In Angela's Ashes, he wrote of hunger, a home flooded with rainwater and the grinding humiliation of seeking handouts from charities in the hardscrabble Irish city.
But his vivid prose captured the speech and quirks of a gallery of relatives, leavening a truly harrowing childhood with compassion and humour.

After leaving school at 13, McCourt supported his mother and brothers and sisters with occasional jobs and petty crime.

At 19, he returned to the United States, finding work at a New York hotel. He subsequently trained as a schoolteacher, only later becoming a published writer.

His brother, Malachy McCourt, is an actor and author who has appeared in numerous film, television and theatre productions.

Quote of the (Month)

One thing that has touched me lately is something that Ted Canada, who is a grandfather, had said after his daughter, two granddaughters, and another child were all killed together (as mentioned in this past story):





"....And one good thing that I can say is she had no reason not to make it in heaven because she had no time to sin."




...How true..

And another thing..:

"I'm just . . . the only thing that holds me up is knowing that those babies are in the arms of the Lord."


Place yourself in this man's shoes. This is one reason people choose religion. You need to believe to cope with such things..

'Teenager Suffering From Rare Disease Which Will Turn Her Into Lliving Statue'

So sad..
A teenager is suffering from a rare disease which will turn her into "living statue" as her muscles turn to bone.

Already her arms have locked in a bent position at her waist and which means she can no longer reach up or dress without help.

Seanie Nammock, 13, from London, suffers from fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP), thought to affect only 600 people across the world.

Even a slight knock can cause a reaction which triggers irreversible bone growth which lock her joints into place.

The teenager discovered she had the condition last year, when a minor accident on a trampoline caused her first flare-up.

Her mother, Marian Granaghan, said: "She had fallen on her back and it had caused a sore lump to form.

"It was huge, hard red and hot to the touch so I took her to the hospital to get it checked out."

But doctors could not diagnose the condition immediately.

"The drip she was on before she was diagnosed is probably what caused her left arm to lock," said Marian.

"To be told your daughter has one of the worst medical problems on the planet and that there is no cure is every mother's nightmare," she added.

Her daughter is determined stay positive about her condition.

She said: "I just said 'Oh well I'll have to just get on with it'.

"I'm still me so I'm trying to not let it make a any difference."

She added: " I don't get scared by looking at stuff on the internet as I don't automatically assume that something bad is going to happen to me. It might not, I like to stay positive."

People with the condition are often born with big toes shorter than the rest, which can be an aid to early diagnosis.

Tests are underway in America on a possible drug to halt the bone growth associated with FOP after doctors discovered the gene that causes the disease.

True CrimeSearchers: The Chandra Levy Case

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- For more than a year, the criminal justice students jotted details of Chandra Levy's final movements onto a huge timeline taped to a classroom wall, culled the Internet and public records for scraps of information, and pored over the model skeleton laid out on a table in their lab at Bauder College in Atlanta, Georgia.

They spent hours with the slain intern's mother, Susan Levy, who flew from her home in California to Atlanta just to talk to them. Chandra Levy had studied criminal justice in college, too.

They began with a list of five suspects, then narrowed it down to one. On December 28, they mailed their findings to the police chief in Washington, D.C. They never heard back.

But on Saturday, the text and phone messages began to fly. There's a suspect, they told each other with excitement. An arrest is imminent.

"It completely validates 15 months of work," their teacher, Sheryl McCollum, said that Saturday morning. "We knew this case was solvable. There was no reason for it not to be solved." Meet the members of the campus crime club »

A week ago, the police chief in Washington, D.C., called Levy's parents and told them a suspect in the 2001 slaying soon would be arrested.

"I got a call from the Washington police department, just to give me a heads up that there's a warrant out for the arrest," said Susan Levy, the victim's mother. She added that police did not provide a name, but sources later identified him to CNN as Ingmar Guandique.

Guandique is serving a 10-year prison sentence for two assaults in Washington's Rock Creek Park that occurred around the time of Levy's disappearance. Levy's remains were found in the park.

- Rest of article here -

Family Finds Letters From 6-Year-Old After Cancer Claims Her

CINCINNATI -- A young girl who lost her battle against cancer is continuing to inspire people well after her death thanks to the letters she left behind.

Six-year-old Elena Desserich’s life was turned upside down when she was diagnosed with brain cancer.

Her family said that at the beginning, they were told to expect that Elena would only have about 135 days to live.

During her final days, the girl began writing letters to her family and hid them all over their home.

“She would tuck them into bookcases, tuck them into dishes, china you don't touch every year and you'd lift it up and there'd be a note in it,” Keith Desserich, Elena’s father, said.

Her father also wrote during their last few months. He kept an online journal of their battle that soon came to have a following.

"Before we knew it, we had 12,000 people a day who were reading this,” Desserich said.

Now he’s turned the collection of memories into a book titled “Notes Left Behind, 135 Days with Elena.”

The Desserich’s said that Elena left behind hundreds of notes all over the house.

The family is hoping to pass on their daughter’s strength and courage.

“They [readers] should take the time to listen and not get caught up in the days rush,” Desserich said. “To this day, I'll never forget that lesson. Wish I would've learned it earlier.”

The book will go on sale this weekend. The Desserich’s will be signing books at the Kenwood Barnes and Noble store starting at 2 p.m.

All the proceeds will go toward cancer research.