She Reached For Her Scooter and Never Came Back

Michaela Joy Garrick was standing in the parking

lot of the Rainbow Market in Hayward, California

on the morning of November 19th 1988 when she

realized she and her friend Katrina had forgotten

their scooters. The first day of Thanksgiving

break had started with such light -hearted energy.

The girls had spent the morning practicing for

their school Christmas pageant and after much

pleading Michaela's mother Sharon had finally

agreed to let them ride the two blocks to the

store for snacks and sodas They had five dollars

in their pockets a gift from Katrina's father

But as they walked away from the market with

their bags of beef jerky and candy They looked

back and saw that one of the scooters was missing

Michaela spotted it just a few spaces down Strangely

tucked behind a car as the nine -year -old bent

down to grab the handlebars The car door flew

open. A man stepped out, wrapped his right arm

around her waist, and shoved her into the back

seat. Katrina watched, frozen, as her best friend's

screams were muffled by the closing door. The

car, a dilapidated tan or gold sedan, sped south

on a mission boulevard. And just like that, Michaela

was gone. The disappearance of Michaela Garrett

would become one of the most haunting cold cases

in the history of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Within 24 hours, sketches of the abductor were

plastered across Northern California. He was

described as a white male in his early 20s, slender,

with shoulder -length dirty blonde hair and a

face deeply scarred by acne. The car was just

as distinct. A large, older American sedan, possibly

an Oldsmobile, missing its hubcaps and splattered

with what looked like dried cement. Despite 5

,000 tips in the first year alone and an investigation

that involved the Hayward Police Department and

the FBI scouring the hillsides by helicopter,

the trail went cold. For decades, Sharon Merch

would keep a yellow ribbon tied to a tree near

that market. She started a blog writing directly

to her daughter. Buying her gifts for birthdays

and graduations, she wasn't there to celebrate.

She bought a Barbie doll for the high school

graduation that never happened and a book titled,

I promise I'll find you for Michaela's 18th birthday.

The community never forgot the girl with the

prominent ears and the feather shaped earrings.

But as the years turned into decades, the hope

of finding her alive began to flicker. The search

for Michaela often felt like a series of cruel

mirages. In 2009, when J .C. Dugard was found

alive after 18 years in captivity, investigators

swarmed the property of her kidnapper, Philip

Guarido. He lived only an hour away and had been

released from prison just months before Michaela

vanished. But no physical evidence linked him

to her. Then in 2012, Attention shifted to the

speed freak killers, Wesley Sherman -Teen and

Loren Herzog. Sherman -Teen, from Death Row,

claimed they had killed Michaela and buried her

in a well. When bone fragments were discovered

in a mass grave in Linden, Sharon Merch braced

herself for the worst. She even took the fragments

home, waiting for the DNA results that would

finally tell her if she was holding her daughter.

But the lab results came back negative. The bones

belonged to someone else. The mystery remained

a gaping wound in the heart of Hayward until

a dedicated cold case unit decided to look back

at the original physical evidence with fresh

eyes and modern technology. In 2020, forensic

investigators returned to the scooter Michaela

had reached for in that parking lot 32 years

earlier. Back in 1988, technicians had managed

to lift a partial palm print and a thumbprint

from the frame. But at the time, there was no

match in the system. With the advancement of

digital scanning and automated fingerprint identification,

a Hayward fingerprint examiner ran the prints

again against a specific list of suspects. This

time, the computer didn't just find a possibility,

it found a hit. The Prince belonged to David

Emery Mish. At the time of the kidnapping, Mish

was 27 years old. He matched the fox -eye description

given by Katrina perfectly. Even more chilling

was the realization of where he had been that

day. Prosecutors later revealed that on November

17th, 1988, just two days before the kidnapping,

it would have been the first birthday of Mish's

infant son. who had died months earlier. The

baby was buried in the Chapel of the Chimes Cemetery,

located directly across the street from the Rainbow

Market. Investigators believe Mish was at the

cemetery visiting his son's grave when he spotted

the two young girls on their scooters and began

to plan his attack. David Mish was not a new

name to the legal system. When the charges were

announced in December 2020, He was already serving

a sentence of 18 years to life for the 1989 murder

of Marber Ball in Hayward. He had beaten and

stabbed her to death in her own home just a year

after Michaela disappeared. But his trail of

violence went back even further. In 2018, he

had been charged with the 1986 murders of two

best friends in Fremont, Michelle Xavier and

Jennifer Dewey. Those two young women, aged 18

and 20, had been found shot and stabbed along

a remote road after attending a birthday dinner.

For 30 years, that case had also been cold until

DNA found under Jennifer Dewey's fingernails

was matched to Mish. When he finally stood trial

for the Fremont murders in late 2024, the courtroom

witnessed the true nature of the man. Mish was

frequently disruptive, at one point singing 99

bottles of beer on the wall while the victim's

families were delivering their emotional impact

statements. In December 2024, a jury found him

guilty of two counts of first degree murder.

And in January 2025, he was sentenced to two

consecutive terms of 25 years to life. The resolution

of Michaela's case, however, remains caught in

the gears of the legal system. In 2023, the Alameda

County District Attorney's Office made the controversial

decision to drop the special circumstances enhancements

against Mish, which would have guaranteed life

without parole or the death penalty. This move

sparked outrage from victims advocates who argued

it removed the leverage needed to pressure Mish

into revealing where he hid Michaela's remains.

Mish has never cooperated with investigators,

and to this day, her body has never been found.

One theory suggests he may have left her in the

wooded areas near Niles Canyon, but searches

have yielded nothing. Tragically, Sharon Merch

passed away from breast cancer in May 2022, never

having the chance to see the man who took her

daughter face a jury for that specific crime.

She died knowing his name. but not knowing where

her daughter lay. As of June 2026, David Mish

remains in custody at the Santa Rita jail in

Dublin, awaiting trial for the kidnapping and

murder of Michaela Gehrig. He is 65 years old,

a man whose life has been defined by a series

of brutal, calculated crimes against women and

children, often committed just days or months

after being released on parole for previous offenses.

The Rainbow Market is now a different grocery

store under a different name, but the memory

of that Saturday morning in November 1988 still

hangs over the corner of Mission Boulevard and

Lafayette Avenue. The case is a testament to

the fact that while technology can eventually

catch up with the past, it cannot always heal

the silence that a single violent act leaves

behind. Michaela would have been in her mid -40s

today, perhaps living the life her mother so

vividly imagined for her in those blog posts.

Instead, she remains a symbol of a community's

lost innocence and a mother's ironclad promise

to never stop looking, even when the world moved

on. If you found this story compelling, please

share it with someone who values the pursuit

of justice for those who can no longer speak

for themselves. And that's how I heard it.

The Story