Don't Kiss Them Good-bye Read online

  I should be an example to all. I knew that Dad was going to pass and I knew the cause. Trust me, I did everything to prevent it but found out it was not in my hands; it never had been. When I am given information from the other side that benefits my client, or even helps to save a life, I am still only a vehicle. The information was going to get to them one way or another; I happened to be the conduit. But when someone’s number is up, it’s up. I hope I can help alleviate the guilt of failing to see a sign that could prevent a death. My father’s story should serve as a reminder to all that sometimes it’s just not in our hands.

  My friend Alison sees how the deaths of our two wonderful fathers show both sides of the coin: my dad’s quick and unexpected, her dad’s slow and drawn out. There are gifts in both. Almost all experiences offer some gifts; they’re there if you look. Sometimes they’re hard to recognize through the tears, but you’ll see them eventually.

  Now I celebrate Dad’s life. I’ve learned to know and love my dad even better since his passing. As I went through his belongings, searching for a shred of him, I kept rediscovering him. I found him in the many checks he’d written to Feed the Children and other kids’ charities. I found him in his box of dance trophies dating back to the early 1960s. I found him in the cards I’d given him over the years and the stick-figure illustrations that I drew for him as a child. He was in the faces of my children in the photos I sorted through with a heavy heart. As I claimed his cherished belongings, I decided to reclaim him. For he is not really gone.

  To my father I say, “Until we meet again, Dad! I love you, but you already know that.”

  My dad had a saying he concluded conversations with: “Cha cha cha, que sera, sera.” He always knew that whatever will be, will be.

  Chapter 2

  A Little Girl

  Meets the Other Side

  In 1978, at the ripe old age of six, I saw my first glimpse of the other side (at least, the first glimpse that I can remember). My great-grandpa Johnson died after a long battle with intestinal cancer. I remember my mom crying because Grandpa was in such excruciating pain, and he had always been so good to her. His death seemed long and drawn out.

  I went to his funeral, but I didn’t really understand what was going on. I remember Great-grandpa’s casket being so high off the ground that I couldn’t say good-bye. Mom had to pick me up so that I could look at him one last time.

  Great-grandpa Johnson often wore a cowboy hat. He was a tall, friendly man who loved children. I would miss playing with him. I whispered good-bye and then I hid behind my mom, looking for an escape.

  I wanted to understand what was happening. Why was everybody sobbing? I just tried to stay out of the way while my big brother Michael was busy trying to force me to touch Great-grandpa’s cold hand. This petrified me. It was a long, sad day.

  That night I was awakened from my sleep by a presence. My room was filled with a soft glow. I wasn’t scared, but I was on edge.

  Great-grandpa Johnson stood at the foot of my bed and said, “I am okay, I am still with you. Tell your mom there’s no more pain.”

  I wanted to call for Mom, but I was paralyzed and awestruck. I wanted her to see him and know that he wasn’t sick anymore. I wanted her to see that he was back, or so I thought. Great-grandpa lingered for only a moment after giving his message, and then he was gone.

  What was going on? One minute he was back, and the next he was gone again. Didn’t he want to stay?

  I got out of bed and went down the hall to sit next to Mom’s door. I knew what had happened was not typical. Mom had never talked about seeing people again after their funerals. I was worried that she might think I was making up stories and I’d get in trouble. But I told her anyway. The experience was too special to keep to myself. I had to share it with her; Great-grandpa said so.

  My mom did what most parents would do. She smiled, said, “Of course I believe you,” and then turned away.

  But I knew she didn’t believe me. I felt so misunderstood. Her reaction, although normal, started me on a journey of denial and confusion. My logical little mind started churning. If I had only imagined seeing my great-grandpa, then he hadn’t really visited me.

  I had always been told I had a vivid imagination, so I decided to keep these imaginative moments to myself. After the subject of Great-grandpa was dropped, I dismissed psychic occurrences and ignored all messages from the other side. Sometimes I thought I was hallucinating. I could see faded human figures standing next to people. Colorful personal information about strangers popped into my head and ran from beginning to end like a movie. I convinced myself that my mind was bored and was creating visions. But I was tired of visual congestion. I was overloaded by the other side and I didn’t even know it.

  As a psychic child, I needed to be encouraged to talk about my ability, but how could my mom have known what I needed? It is not commonly known in our society how to help young psychics develop their gifts. One of the reasons I wrote this book is to assist parents and their gifted children in avoiding misunderstanding and confusion. I want to prevent young people from turning away from their gift, and instead to embrace it early in life.

  Chapter 3

  Angel on My

  Shoulder

  I was an awkward eleven-year-old. My legs looked like a foal’s, long and knobby-kneed. My hair was long, curly, and red. My cheeks were covered with freckles, which I hated. But to an outsider, I looked like any other American girl without a care in the world. Like most sheltered children, I fell a little on the naive side.

  One afternoon, I was riding my bicycle home from playing at a girlfriend’s house in my neighborhood, concentrating on what my mom had made for dinner. As I turned the corner, I passed an alley that was lined with middle-class wooden fences. Just then, a car pulled up beside me with two young men in it.

  The man on the passenger side leaned out of his window toward me. With his long hair, he looked a little like my big brother, Michael. I thought maybe this was one of his friends. We lived in a cul-de-sac, so most of the teenagers driving this direction were there to visit him.

  The moments that followed are burned into my memory forever.

  He smiled and said, “You need a ride home?”

  “No thank you,” I replied. My mom had taught me that being polite was important. “I live right around the corner. I’m almost home.”

  Then he said, “Come on, it will be fun! Come drive around with us.”

  I looked around. There was nobody in any of the front yards, nobody driving down Thirty-second Street, nobody around at all. My stomach felt sick. Something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t move.

  A voice sounded in my ear: Go! Take off! Images of my house flashed urgently in my head over and over again. The voice startled me out of my paralyzed fear and I took off on my bike for my house. The car with the two men peeled out in the opposite direction and sped down Thirty-second Street. My chest hurt from holding my breath out of fear. I rode home as fast as I could and told my mom what had happened.

  She did what the majority of parents do when confronted with this situation: She opted not to call the police. Having spent years promoting child safety, I know that, unfortunately, most attempted child abductions go unreported by the parents.

  That same year a paperboy was abducted and sexually assaulted in my neighborhood. I know in my heart that if I had stayed put even thirty seconds longer, I would have been pulled through the window of that car and been a victim of a violent crime. I also know that because I listened to that powerful, authoritative voice on that hot afternoon in 1983, I am here to share my life story with my readers. I listened and I survived. Listen to your guides, whether you feel they are angels, family members on the other side, or simply guardians. They try to guide us through life safely and successfully, so pay attention to them. Don’t dismiss them. Don’t question whether they are really there—they are.

  That same year, I remember, I saw a TV movie called Adam. It was the story of Adam W
alsh, a six-year-old boy who had been abducted, murdered, and decapitated. As I watched the movie, I realized what abductors could do to kids. I was so sheltered that I had no idea that such awful things could happen. I realized what the two men could have done to me had I stayed any longer.

  I did not understand why people hurt kids, but I knew that it was wrong. I knew that somehow other adults could help stop bad people from hurting kids. I vowed to myself that when I grew up I was going to do something to protect children from predators. It would probably be through politics or law. I wasn’t big enough yet, but I would be someday.

  I remember my fear of abduction turning to anger and then into a plan. Within a year I wrote a school paper discussing my future career. I was going to be a prosecuting attorney, and someday I would be the judge who dealt out harsh punishment to people who hurt children. My path was already being defined. I felt the calling to turn the tide against child predators.

  Almost two decades later, in November 2000, my life’s goal would reemerge as a result of a missing-person case in Texas that led me toward helping to establish a child abduction alert system in Arizona. I will be discussing that in the next chapter.

  If I can provide law enforcement with perpetrator information that helps point them in the right direction, then I have helped in the fight against a lowlife. Balancing the scales is the reason I do what I do. If someone who hurts a child is held accountable, then society as a whole can rest easier. If I can help to ease the pain of a victim’s family members and somehow make their hearts lighter, then the heavy nature of the tasks I undertake is well worth it.

  I know now that when I pedaled my bike home on that frightening day in my twelfth year that there was an angel on my shoulder, setting me on the path that I would follow as an adult.

  Chapter 4

  Missing

  As a college freshman, at age nineteen, I sat in my first political science class. As I listened to my professor lecturing each day, chronicling the details of various wars, I grew increasingly interested in how a political strategist could finesse a dangerous situation. It occurred to me that such people need not only historical knowledge to draw on but also an apparent instinct for defusing potential crises. Political strategists have played important roles in behind-the-scenes American security.

  Now I was torn between wanting to be a lawyer and wanting to be a political strategist. I had a knack for knowing what people were going to do before they did it, and I often received a mental picture of a criminal while watching news reports of unsolved cases. But I was still too young and inexperienced to realize the extent of my ability. I was unwilling to think of myself as different from others. It would take more time and a chain of complicated events to bring that awareness and acceptance.

  As of today, I have worked on numerous missing person cases. I profile for law enforcement and I assist the friends and families of murdered people. I can access both the victims’ and the perpetrators’ minds. I find I’m more effective if I access the perpetrators, because they tend to run more on adrenaline, meaning that they are processing it in their minds, rather than their hearts or their souls. Tapping into what someone is thinking is easier for me than sensing what someone is feeling. I aim for the most information in the shortest amount of time, so less emotion helps to bring through more coherent information. Unfortunately, most abduction cases do not have the happy ending we’d all like them to have.

  Most people don’t realize that there are plenty of competent psychic profilers (although the psychic part isn’t always acknowledged) out there who assist law enforcement every day. Understand that often we cannot take any credit for our work because it can legally hinder a case. The defense would have a field day in court with psychic intervention, and we don’t want to discredit the prosecution or do anything to weaken a case.

  Law enforcement is also hesitant to acknowledge our role because of the controversy surrounding psychics. Having family in law enforcement, and having worked in the field myself, I can understand why this is the case.

  Psychics are physically and emotionally drained by work on missing persons’ cases. It takes a great deal of energy to access both perpetrators and victims. It opens us up to things most people never experience. For these reasons, some psychics choose not to work missing persons cases.

  Aside from being draining, the job is often thankless. Those who choose to do it want to make a difference. I was given the ability to see into criminal minds, and I won’t squander that gift. At the same time, I work on only a limited number of cases per year so that I don’t burn out. (For the record, I’ve never asked for or accepted payment for my work on any such case.)

  If I cannot provide specific, helpful details I will not work a case. I prefer not to work personally with a family but rather to work with police, friends of the family, and so on. I profile to help people, not hurt them.

  While working as a child advocate in a nonpsychic context, I was able to talk with some parents of missing children who had previously used psychics for help. I was dumbfounded at what they had been told by these callous opportunists. They had been given hurtful, traumatic details of their children’s abductions, but they had been led no closer to finding the children or the perpetrators. The psychics then charged money for inflicting such pain upon them.

  I cannot tell you how upsetting this is to me. It makes me hot with anger for these parents and their children, because I spend my life trying to lend credibility to my gift.

  I hope that by providing some guidelines for young psychics and mediums, I can help prevent them from becoming the types who injure their clients and damage our field. Nothing is more difficult than a loved one’s death, especially a child’s. If such details as “She was in excruciating pain” or “She screamed for her mother” are pertinent to a case (which is unlikely), offer them to the police, not to the family. Those who add salt to an already painful wound are not only unethical, they are without mercy or conscience.

  Searching in Texas

  In August 2000, I had an opportunity to work with Texas law enforcement on my first official missing-person case. This case will always be special to me, and it resulted in something that I will forever be proud of.

  I had provided law enforcement with specific details about the perpetrator in the abduction and murder of a little girl; this information had not been released to the public. They were so taken aback by the information that they wanted to meet with me personally.

  I was planning a trip to Virginia to do a media interview and made arrangements to catch a connecting flight in Dallas, where I was met at the airport by a group of noble-looking Rangers. They were tall, polite, and ready to go. One of my favorites was the sergeant. He was very Texan, and I mean that as a compliment. I was as amused by him as he was by me.

  During our car ride, he turned to me and said, “Tell me something about myself.” He said it in a friendly way, so I didn’t mind.

  “Oh, a test! Like I don’t deal with that every day of my life.” I paused, smiled, and said, “You have a serious problem with your heart; you need to pay special attention to your health.”

  He and the spirited female police officer riding with us burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I just had double bypass surgery on my heart,” the sergeant said.

  I told him not to cheat on his prescribed health routine. (Unfortunately, he called me a few months later to tell me that he’d had another heart attack.)

  We spent a few hours driving and covered the many areas where the perpetrator claimed to have taken the little girl. The perpetrator was a compulsive liar, so I eliminated the false areas for the police. (Many serial killers like to keep the location of their victims secret; they know that it gives them power over law enforcement and society.) Incidentally, the police had already eliminated some of the areas; they just thought they’d test me. I traipsed around in the wooded areas and stepped over animal carcasses, animal skeletons, and so
on. I wish I’d had my gun with me; it was straight out of a horror flick. The Rangers had a clear advantage, and they promised they wouldn’t let the tarantulas get me.

  I saw the barbed-wire fence I had described, and the area where I was walking was near a major marker that I’d pointed out on a map before coming to Texas. The information I had given them earlier agreed with that provided by the killer’s accomplices, and I learned that I had correctly described the vehicle used in the child’s abduction; also I had stated correctly that the perpetrator had switched vehicles during the abduction. It’s always a little creepy to see your visions unfold.

  Night fell and we were unable to cover the rest of the area. I had a morning flight and had to leave without continuing the search. My hiking boots and I would have to come back another time. I was frustrated. I had been looking for evidence of the child’s death and it seemed my efforts had been in vain. In an odd coincidence, tropical storm Allison came in and flooded the area shortly thereafter.

  The Rangers and other law enforcement officers I’d worked with were brave, honorable people with tears in their eyes over this child. I left disappointed, and I asked my guides, “Why? Why did you send me there if I wasn’t supposed to find her?”

  The answer to that question would come in three months. When I returned to Phoenix, I recalled that the Texas police sergeant had told me about a system called the Amber Alert, named after Amber Hagerman, who was abducted and murdered in 1996. It’s a child abduction alert system that is used to inform the public as soon as the police have determined that an abduction has occurred. Local radio and TV stations interrupt their broadcasting with a description of the suspect, vehicle, and child, giving drivers and residents a chance to save a child by notifying the police of his or her whereabouts.