When 17-year-old Chelsea King from Poway went missing on Thursday afternoon while out for a run at a nearby park in Rancho Bernardo, I hoped her disappearance was just a misunderstanding with her parents.
On Friday, when the cross country runner and straight-A student still wasn't home, the news that her cell phone had been found inside her locked car at the start of the trail where she frequently ran by herself made me uneasy.
Over the weekend and on Monday, her parents thanked the volunteers who met each day at the park to search for Chelsea in hopes of finding her alive. The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach intensified as I, like many people, saw the chances of a successful reunion with her parents decrease from slim to none.
By Tuesday, with a suspect in custody and with search teams focused on Lake Hodges and the surrounding area until they found Chelsea's body buried in a shallow grave along a tributary for the lake, I began to feel ill.
That's why today I was sick to my stomach as John Albert Gardner III entered a not guilty plea to answer the charge of murder during the rape or attempted rape of Chelsea and assault with the intent to rape a different female jogger in December.
I suspect that the gut-wrenching agony won't end for weeks or months as Gardner, a convicted sexual predator, appears in court on the charges against him, especially while investigators try to determine if he is responsible for the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl from Escondido.
Amber Dubois has been missing for slightly more than a year. I can't imagine the torment that her parents are going through as they wait to find out if they'll finally have some closure while dreading the news that their little girl might have been raped and murdered in the same manner in which Chelsea was attacked six days ago.
Either way, it will take a long time for our community to heal, whether we find out that the psychopath responsible for the deaths of two young girls is behind bars for good or determine that one bad guy is in jail while another attacker, if someone else abducted Amber, is on the loose in San Diego County. Our collective hearts are broken and there's no doubt in my mind that we'll be sick with worry about our children for years to come.
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