I think about her from time to time, not everyday, but from time to time. She had a brother and no sister, I had a brother and no sister. She was born December 11, 1978, I was born November 11, 1979. She had just visited one of my favorite places, the nature center. When I was little and my parents experimented with church, sometimes my family would go there on Sunday afternoons and I would chase the goat that roamed free among the ducks, trying to hug his necks and feed him leaves.

“That goat shouldn’t be out here, wondering around among kids,” my mother once said, tightening her coat around her shoulders against the cold, and I being silly, said back,
“He’s a kid too, Mom, it’s only fair!”

I remember a lot about 1989, too much as far as I’m concerned. I am cursed with an obnoxiously good memory, and I forget little, I can’t even try to forget, not that I would try to forget her.

In October of 1989, 10 year old Amy Mihaljevic was taken from a shopping center in Bay Village by a man who claimed to know her mother, and claimed to know all about her new promotion. He had given Amy a call and persuaded her to meet him, and, together, they would buy her mother a gift. I was nine, when I first saw the news reports and saw her photo alerted on the t.v. screen. I tried to memorize her smile, her shoulder length blond hair, her eyes that crinkled with shyness at the camera. I could be the one to find to her, to see her being lead by the elbow by the man in the black and white sketch. I could be the one to call the police at a pay phone at the Great Northern Mall or outside next to the playground by the Olmsted Falls wadding pool. “Come quick!” I’d whisper, “She’s here, she’s with him, you have to hurry!”

I never could forget her face, although the details about the case became a bit fuzzy, there was something about a pair of earrings . . . and something about horses? It all seemed a bit strange to me, my memories weren’t totally adding up. Had I ever really know the details fully? I was only a little kid after all, and although she wanted me safe and aware, my mother didn’t want me dwelling on something so scary for a nine year old on the news. But it wasn’t scary to me. They would find Amy. She would be okay, Mom, you’ll see.

Halloween came and went. That year I was a punk rocker with purple sprayed and silver glittered hair, a faux leather skirt, hot pink tights, and glow in the dark bracelets up my elbows. In November I turned ten at party with all the girls in my class. I wore a pink and navy sweater dress and leg warmers. I got a mermaid doll with spiral blond curls and a glow-y blue tail, and a Bahama Mama Huffy bike from my dad. I can remember the winter started early that year, it snowed quickly, and by December the blizzard of ’89 was blasting us, full force. When my mom picked me up from the babysitter’s one Friday night I walked to the house from the car, the blue-y white snow piled up to my hips.

Everyday after school I would sit with Grandma Mecheling in her kitchen doing my homework while she watched her soap opera. Her little orange cat would twist around my feet as I’d chew on my pencil eraser and sip on watered down Cool Aid. As my babysitter watched the lies and deceit of perfectly coiffed actors, a news bulletin interrupted. It was about Amy. I can remember we both watched, we turned the volume up. It was nothing new, more of the same, she still hadn’t been found, but she was still out there.

“That poor little girl,” said Grandma Mecheling, shaking her head, “You know when they’ve been gone this long. . .”

But I didn’t know. I was only ten. It was early in December, not yet December 11th and I watched the snow fall in little lacy flakes outside the window. Now Amy and I were the same age. I wondered where she was, I wondered if she was cold. I didn’t know if one day we’d be friends, but I knew one day she’d come home.

It’s been 20 years since she disappeared and I revisited the case. She’s on Wikipedia, strangely enough. The picture, a tiny school photo with blue-pink background, just like mine in the fifth grade, sits in the upper right hand corner of my computer screen. In 1989 I can remember thinking she looked sophisticated somehow, more grown up then me. She wore a high side ponytail, an oversized white tee with a hint of pale pink at the left shoulder and a long silver cross necklace. Now, at age 30, I see a tiny little girl, pretty and sweet looking. As I read the details I discovered that she loved horses and rode at Holly Hill Farms and that she was wearing jade earrings in the shape of tiny horse heads when she went missing. The man who they believe may have abducted her went from just a black and white sketch to a teacher and volunteer at the Bay Village Nature Center. His name was Dean Runkle. They think he may have found her name and number in a sign-in book kept at the door. She was the last girl, but not the only girl, to receive the odd phone call from the man claiming to be her mother’s friend.

When I was ten I loved horses too, I used to ride at the stables in Columbia Station. My parents were recently divorced also. I loved my mom, I wanted to buy her gifts, for Mother’s Day, but I never had any money. Later in high school I became friends with a group of Bay Village kids. We’d hang out in the summer at graduation parties and watch 80’s movies together in basements full of board games and craft supplies. My friend George even had a grooming station in his for his tall, black, curly-haired dog.
We all remained friends through college, and one afternoon in August I helped my friend Lindsay, another Bay kid, pack for Kent. I stood in her closet sifting through shoes, piling them up into a brown cardboard box, when she came to me with a pair of tiny white Keds.

“What are those?” I asked.

“She left them at my house right before she disappeared. They’re her shoes. They’re Amy Mihaljevic’s shoes. She used to be my neighbor, you know, she used to be my babysitter.” Then she put them on the floor in the closet and went to grab another box.

In the end I was wrong, Amy never came back. She was found on February 8th on the side of Country Road 1181 in Ashland County. She’d been murdered. Although there are suspects, they never found who did it. Now an adult, I see kids at the mall with ice cream cones and shopping bags, pushing each other and play fighting. They have no idea who Amy is, but we do. She was friends with all of us, a piece of all of us.

We’re still searching, Amy. And we’ll never forget.


With Love, From Exile,

E.