(Photo: Montara’s Mikie Benedict visited Greece in the summer of 2006.)
After the exchange of a couple of emails, Mikie Benedict reminded me that I had written a piece about the historic cottage in Montara where the pianist still lives. That was in the 1990s. Mikie is the mother of Anna [please read post below]–Anna was five-years-old in 1973, the year she disappeared from her home just south of rural Half Moon Bay. She has never been heard from again.
If alive, today Anna would be 40-years-old. Mikie admits that every minute since Anna vanished, since that cruel day in 1973, every angle has been looked at– and looked at again and again.
“I still have no answers,” Mikie said.
What keeps you looking, I asked Mikie.
“…I’m sure many people think I’m crazy to go on looking for her after 34 and-a-half years. However, when a family friend timidly suggested trying some search tactics through the Internet (which of course was not available when Anna disappeared in 1973), I could hardly say, ‘No,’ as difficult as it was to drag out all that again.”
Mikie, an accomplished pianist, told me that while doing some general research, she was excited to learn that the Internet was responsible for six recent reunions in San Mateo County, with now grown-children seeking their birth parents. Why couldn’t it work for me? she wondered.
It’s an old case, and without leads it had gone cold, but now Mikie says the county has reopened it.
[Photos: L-R Anna’s kindergarten pix and how Anna might look today.]
“ANNA CHRISTIAN WATERS, born in San Francisco on September 25, 1967, disappeared from her home on Purisima Creek Road, south of Half Moon Bay, California, on January 16, 1973. The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children consider Anna’s case a “non-family abduction.”
“The story of Anna Waters is one of the oldest cases on the records of the NCMEC. An intelligent and effervescent five-year-old, Anna lived in a rural area 45 miles south of San Francisco with her mother, stepfather, and two half-brothers.
“She began kindergarten at Hatch School, Half Moon Bay, in September, 1972. Her mother was an aide in the kindergarten class. On Tuesday, January 16, the school bus dropped her off in front of her house in the early afternoon. Her mother, stepfather and two friends were conversing in the living room. Anna changed into play clothes and went out the back door and into the back yard to play.
“About fifteen minutes later, her mother became uneasy because she heard no sounds from the yard. She went outside and called, and when she got no answer, she called the other adults, who began looking around the farm and calling for Anna. They became alarmed and called the San Mateo Sheriffâs Office, who immediately sent a car, sounded their siren, and joined the search.
“A visitor who said he had greeted Anna as he approached the front of the house was questioned and said he had seen nothing suspicious except a white van carrying an old man and a young man who seemed overly friendly. This visitor joined the search.
“A helicopter crew and divers were called. The divers searched Purisima Creek, which ran behind the property nearby. The family and the deputies continued the search of the grounds and creek until nightfall and posted a watch overnight. In the days following, friends, neighbors, crews from the honor camp, Explorer Scouts and professional fishermen continued the search. The local newspaper called the case âthe greatest search in Coastside history.â?
Annaâs father, a physician practicing in San Francisco, was questioned and investigated regarding her disappearance, but nothing was found connecting him to the case. Kidnapping for ransom was ruled out when no demands were made.
After divers had explored the three-mile length of Purisima Creek, pulling out and examining every log-jam and barrier, officials stated that they were âninety percent sureâ? that they had not missed her, had she gone into the creek. A geologist issued a report on silting and tide patterns, showing that it was next to impossible that no body would be recovered had it gone into the creek.
“Not the slightest clue has ever been found to Annaâs disappearance. No article of clothing, no sighting, nothing. In 2005, a family friend decided to take some approaches to the investigation which had not been tried in the days before the Internet. A crime-solving Web site, WebSleuths, opened a Spotlight Case forum which at present has more than five thousand posts with almost a quarter of a million page views.”
Burt says if he had a wish, he would love to meet Thomas Jefferson– the greatest of all American presidents, author of the “Declaration of Independence“–to show him his new iPhone. Burt would demonstrate all the capabilities of this wonderful “machine” and tell Jefferson that he was holding in the palm of his hand, the best of human ingenuity–and that the iPhone represents the promise of modern civilization.
Thursday night in Palo Alto at the Westin Hotel, Presidential candidate Congressman Ron Paul (at far right, wearing the tie) met and talked with supporters.
Photo below: Kathy McGrade and my longtime companion Burt Blumert discuss the Ron Paul campaign at the Westin Hotel in Palo Alto. Kathy McGrade, who is an engineer and runs her own company, has a strong connection to the Coastside–the La Honda resident once lived on Mirada Road next door to the Bach Society in Miramar. Around that time, the 1970s, she was involved with, what I believe was the very first privately owned rocket-launching company called “Starstruck,” headquartered in Redwood City.
With the creation of his Cappy Ricks character in 1916–the founder of the Blue Star Navigation and the Ricks Lumber and Logging Companies– Moss Beach author Peter Kyne was on his way to becoming a household name.
[The house Peter Kyne grew up in–near Highway 1, at the southern end of MB may still be standing. I’ve misplaced my photo of the two-story yellow house–but I’ll find it for you.]
The Cappy Ricks character became so popular that Kyne’s editors asked the author to travel the world and describe what he saw from Cappy Ricks’ point of view. And it must have seemed a much bigger world than the internet-driven one we are accustomed to today. From any point of view, small town Peter Kyne was a very lucky writer.
To use a sports metaphor, he was in “the zone” and batting in one home run novel after the other. Things got more exciting as Kyne’s book, “The Three Godfathers”– a story about several outlaws who promise a dying woman they will save her baby–was made into a 1948 film directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Ward Bond.
The 1919 & 1938 filmed versions of Kyne’s book called the “Valley of the Giants” was about saving the old groves of redwoods in Northern California–a timely plot as there had been a powerful movement emanating from leaders and students at Stanford University to preserve the elegant redwoods of San Mateo County through the founding in the 1920s of Memorial Park in La Honda.
As Peter Kyne became famous, he visited the Coastside more and more rarely. A Half Moon Bay nephew, Gerald Kyne, remembered his Uncle Peter visiting Moss Beach, arriving in a chauffeur-driven automobile. By then he had long lived elsewhere–but those early years on the Coastside had left their mark.
Coastsider Bob Pelikan discovered the long-neglected 1931 Buick, a gem of a car, sleeping in a barn behind Duarte’s Tavern in Pescadero. The old two-seater had belonged to a San Jose family. Since Bob was retired, with more than ever to do (“Retiring, that’s when I got busy,” he told me today), he went to work restoring the Buick to its classic beauty.
He has a special [romantic] appeal to women– and his often dreamy, fantasy view of life can be enjoyed at the Borsini-Burr Gallery in Half Moon Bay (235 Main St., 1-877.712.2111.)
“Three Graces” by Michael Parkes. (This isn’t an “ad”.)
