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there's an unspoken part of being a crime reporter where you have to ask yourself the questions how am I going to
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make this victim stand out how am I going to make people remember this case how am I going to make them
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care sometimes it's the crime itself that will grab people's attention like a case I covered where a young woman was
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walking down the street on her birthday holding her birthday cake when someone gunned her down the crime scene was
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surreal icing smeared the pavement the cake was Mash next to her body it was the day she came into the world and the
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day someone took her out of it but more often than not if you live in an area with a high crime rate like
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Bakersfield the crimes can start to blend together most of the cases involve adult male victims who are shot to death
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most missing persons cases involve adults who don't have stable lives so it's a strange concept really that the
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most horrific thing imaginable losing a loved one to violence can be difficult to stand out in a newscast a story about
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a 5-year-old having a lemonade stand to raise money for their school can be more
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memorable to viewers so for me making a victim Stand Out is important it's important for keeping their case in the
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Forefront of people's minds which can help the chances of it being solved but it's also what every victim deserves to
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be honored and remembered the way their loved ones would want them to be you have to go deep ER than just the
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they would light up any room they walked into and they'd give you the shirt off their back because even if that's true
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we've all heard it too many times about too many people you need something that made that person special everyone has it
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sometimes it's just a little harder to find for some more than others Micah like so many other missing persons was
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an adult who at the time was living an unstable life but once I started looking for what made him special I found it
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easily I'm Olivia Lavo and this is the Bakersfield 3 [Music] Micah was very almost intuitive that
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people who needed him I don't know how to express it really but he didn't just like you as a friend if you were his
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friend you were his Micah's mom Cheryl says from a young age Micah seemed to have an emotional
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intelligence a lot of people never achieve particularly when it came to coping with tragedy and helping others
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navigate it people they'll say oh you're so strong for talking to us and you're how do you do this and and I think we do
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it because Micah taught us how to grieve with people long ago he was very connected to individuals in their
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grief and even without his family and parents really being that aware of it at the
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time over the years I heard from a man who told me the story of his father who got into a terrible accident and became
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paralyzed the man was a teenager at the time and he said it was so traumatic and
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painful for him that he began distancing himself from his dad when his dad needed
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him most he said it was Micah also just a teen himself who recognized this and went to him and made him confront his
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emotions and deal with them he says Micah's advice changed his life and saved his relation ship with his father
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I heard a couple other stories about how Micah helped people deal with hardship and grief but one story in particular
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really stands out I learned early on that yellow roses were significant to Micah but only recently I found out
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why yellow was Jennifer's favorite color rose is her middle name so it was just always you know the
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yellow roses just kind of clicked Joan Burrow's only daughter Jennifer or Jenny B as her
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friends called her went to high school with Micah Micah was her best guy friend and
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as you see Micah wrote right there best friends forever on her yearbook and on the
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pictures they were really close you know he was always real supportive of her he
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was very supportive after she was gone too one morning their senior year Jennifer
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was driving to work when something that's still unexplainable happened there was
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no other car there was nothing in the road there was no animal there was nothing she just lost control
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and pretty much was gone at the scene the loss devastated Jennifer's entire friend group in the beginning
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they would come they would want to hang out in her room look at her pictures and
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talk about her but mic was the only one who was consistent he would come over every year February 2D the day that you
00:05:46
know the accident happened and April 1st the day of her birthday for 17 years as long as
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Jennifer had been alive Micah spent those two days with her family he always remembered you know no matter what he
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was doing he would come February 2nd April 1st whatever he was doing in his life he always remembered Jennifer on
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those days every year until he didn't when he went missing people started calling me did
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Micah call you on the first did he show up no he didn't as Micah's loved ones put the
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pieces together they determined Micah had been missing for a week before not showing up on Joanne's door on her
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daughter's birthday with a yellow rose in hand at the time Micah was 34 years old but in order to really understand
00:06:42
the events that led up to his disappearance we have to go back to when Micah was just a boy as a child Micah
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was precocious and smart and funny and clever and he always interacted almost better with adults
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than other children his age Micah's mom Cheryl says Micah was very bright from an early age and took
00:07:07
pride in that at 5 years old he insisted on hanging a poster in his bedroom that
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showed all the US presidents and then he proceeded to memorize all of them and their vice presidents when he was in the
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kindergarten and he'd show off that he could point to him and then he could do it without looking and his family
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nickname was stats because he could tell he used to statistics on pretty much anything he had a passion for Education
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he excelled in all his classes he was the star of the debate and forensics teams After High School it was important
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to Micah to go to the same College in the South as his grandparents he was just a few weeks
00:07:46
into his freshman year when terrorists flew two planes into the Twin Towers on September 11th
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2001 and he he told us I'm I'm going to stay through the end of this year but I need to come home I think I'm going to
00:08:01
enlist in the military and of course we were very worried about that very concerned and I
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did not want him really to do that but he came home that following summer and said I'm going in the
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Navy Micah's mom Cheryl says Micah was very passionate about serving his country after 3,000 Americans were
00:08:25
killed in the terrorist attacks and in order to do so he may have lost over some health issues he had with the
00:08:31
growth in his throat but he couldn't hide it for long he was Ill a lot of basic training and it caused a lot of
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infection he was very very sick so they told him that they were going to discharge him and he came home he was
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devastated by that just really took that very hard but but he tried to accept it
00:09:00
the best he could and once he was back home he sought medical treatment for his throat soon after he was healed up from
00:09:08
that he decided I think banking would be fun ultimately he became a licensed financial adviser working at Wells Fargo
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while also finishing his degree he just did very well really anything he applied himself to he could
00:09:25
do really well and um and things seemed to go relatively smoothly for a long time he had a a good
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I think Young Adult Career going he was set he was really set for the Long Haul his personal life was also looking
00:09:44
promising at Wills Fargo he met a hardworking young woman they fell in love got married and not long after had
00:09:51
a baby he always said that he is the best part of me he's the best part of me it seems like it was the best time in
00:10:01
Micah's life transitioning from his 20s to his 30s he had a thriving career and he created a family he was so proud of
00:10:09
his Facebook page gives a little glimpse into what this time in his life was like
00:10:13
and what his wife and son meant to him one post of his reads fatherhood is more than a responsibility it's a gift and
00:10:22
since the day I became a father each passing day has become progressively sweeter than the day before it to share
00:10:29
share my life with such an incredible young man is a blessing Beyond description today I'm thankful for the
00:10:35
gift of fatherhood fatherhood also seemed to give him a deep appreciation for his
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parents in numerous posts he refers to Cheryl his mom as his very best friend in this
00:10:48
life we talked a lot we talked we discussed every political election every County election
00:11:00
um propositions we'd sit and talk about pros and cons and he would hear something on the news
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and he'd call me and he'd want to see what I thought about it Cheryl worked at a local University teaching economics
00:11:15
each semester Micah would be a special guest often helping her students open their first savings account I had
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students who would come by my office and say you know your son really did a great
00:11:28
job and I think I'm going into economics because of that or I think I'm going to
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switch to finance because of that and I loved having him there and he'd come by every once in a while and he just if I
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wasn't in my office he'd leave a Post-It note on my door and I have one of those
00:11:46
notes um in my bedroom now it says I love you Mom your favorite son Micah he's he's my favorite oldest son
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was a always my my response to that and um and I miss him I miss the person he was when he was
00:12:12
well when he was well he was wonderful talked too much he was too loud in the room he
00:12:21
was more than um everyone else in the room sometimes but but he really loved people Mike is Wellness was a fragile
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thing constantly threatened and eventually overtaken by the same growth in his throat that caused him to have to
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leave the Navy despite having surgery the growth grew back it caused him chronic pain as a result his family says
00:12:54
over a period of time several different doctors wrote him prescriptions for pain
00:13:00
Killers with everything the medical community knows today the CDC recommends people take opioids for 3 days or less
00:13:08
because some studies show it can take just 5 days for the drugs to change one's brain chemistry opioids trigger
00:13:16
endorphins muffling pain and creating a temporary feeling of pleasure but doctors have found that the body builds
00:13:24
up tolerance fast suddenly the pain is back coupled with crippling withdrawal symptoms the patient feels significantly
00:13:32
worse than before and becomes desperate for relief in time this happened to Micah and like millions of other
00:13:40
patients when his doctors cut him off he turned to buying oxy from a dealer one of the pills he got off the street was
00:13:47
laced with fentanyl causing Micah to overdose Narcan just barely saved his life when Micah realized how close he'd
00:13:56
come to death it seemed like rock bottom the life he'd worked so hard for was slipping from his grasp he was a husband
00:14:03
and father with a successful Finance career how would he become someone found slumped behind the wheel of their car
00:14:11
dependent on a stranger calling 911 and paramedics being able to break through the window for it was too late he wanted
00:14:18
it to be a wakeup call he went into various recovery programs and vowed to keep fighting to get his old life back
00:14:26
but after he ODed his family says he was never the same when the paramedics revived him they told him he had lost
00:14:33
oxygen to his brain from not breathing we don't know for sure but loved ones believed this caused a brain injury that
00:14:40
severely impacted everything in his life he told his mom Cheryl he couldn't get his thoughts to connect anymore work
00:14:47
suddenly was extraordinarily difficult Cheryl would later find notepads where he' try to write down lists of tasks he
00:14:55
needed to complete Cheryl said they were chaotic and on the back of one Micah had
00:15:00
scribbled I just can't think in time he lost his job and then his insurance which led him to losing
00:15:09
his doctors and the medical programs he needed eventually his marriage fell apart he lost his family and that was
00:15:16
everything from there his mental health began deteriorating Cheryl spent afternoons
00:15:23
locked in her office crying sometimes screaming on the phone with local mental health officials begging for help with
00:15:30
Micah the response was always the same programs were either full or if there was a spot they'd say no one could make
00:15:37
Micah get help he was an adult which made his parents essentially powerless it was very very hard to
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watch and we knew the impact it was having on his family and we knew the impact it was having on us he was very
00:15:56
angry at us because he felt like we were he was he was very paranoid he thought we were taking everyone else's
00:16:05
side but his we he thought we were not doing everything we could to help him unbelievably paranoid at that point
00:16:17
and chaotic and his thinking was very unlike Micah he was his personality was changing by summer 2017 Micah's life was
00:16:31
drastically different than it had been just the year prior by this point he'd lost custody of his son and his circle
00:16:38
of friends had changed as well we found out later he was at a friend's house and
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they were all like well hey you were you went to boot camp you know how to put guns together Mah was offered to use his
00:16:52
military skills to make some money building guns he knew that it was risky behavior that it wasn't right Cheryl
00:16:58
says Micah seemed to rationalize it by saying in other states the same practice isn't illegal just in California where
00:17:05
the gun laws are stricter than other parts of America however he may have made sense
00:17:10
of it Cheryl believes it was a choice that opened him up to a world that Micah was not fit to
00:17:15
[Music] enter Micah wasn't a gangster M didn't belong in this lifestyle and he knew
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it he talked too much you could tell like he wasn't wasn't from the lifestyle cuz he
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was curious he wanted to know everything this is a guy we're calling Sam he's the
00:17:40
same guy who called the cops and got Matt Vander Castile arrested in 2017 Sam was a drug dealer who met Micah through
00:17:47
the same guys that Micah was helping build guns what were your impressions of Micah honestly I thought he was a
00:17:57
cop he was just super well-dressed super nice the nicest person I've ever met in
00:18:04
the dope game never had a bad thing to say about anybody it was just really cool I didn't figure him for a drug
00:18:13
addict like that he was just a Goofy Goober he was funny he was uh like I said he was one of the nicest people
00:18:23
I've ever met another friend Micah met in the news Circle said he loved how Micah would sometimes come over in a
00:18:29
suit and tie they thought of him as classy and educated everyone agreed Micah did not belong in this new
00:18:38
world did you get the sense that he probably didn't realize what he had gotten himself
00:18:43
into yeah I don't think he knew how deep the water was Sam says he's clean now trying to
00:18:50
live a normal life but back in 2017 and 2018 his life was anything but and he was surprised that people like Micah
00:18:59
Bailey and Matt Queen wanted to associate with him they look really clean cut and then he throws someone
00:19:06
like me and I've got 90% of my body tattooed you know I'm from the ghetto and uh you know you wouldn't think those
00:19:17
circles meshed very well while speaking with Sam he made it clear the majority of people in Micah's
00:19:23
New Circle weren't the kind of friends most people would want I mean think about what we do to our
00:19:30
families when we when we're off doing drugs and how we're ripping our families off and stealing from our
00:19:37
families what makes you think a friendship's worth more than that Sam says when drugs and money are
00:19:43
involved you play by a different set of rules in life I wouldn't chop up a friend of mine I might put a bullet in
00:19:50
his leg at one point we got on this topic I had $200 worth of dope come up missing out of my house one time and I
00:20:00
held everybody in my house at gunpoint until I found it so I'm just curious were these people in the room were they
00:20:07
your friends or business associates uh some of them were my friends one of them was an
00:20:15
ex-girlfriend uh that was still really good friends with me so when you hold people like that at
00:20:23
gunpoint what happens afterwards I mean do you apologize do they still want to hang out with
00:20:30
you I told him sorry it was a big misunderstanding you know everybody hears a sack of dope for your troubles
00:20:37
uh just know I'm not going to play about anything missing out of my house so you've got to be
00:20:44
very strong-handed when it comes to uh showing people you know I'm not one to mess with I'm not one that you steal
00:20:52
from I'm not one you talk [ __ ] about did you ever hurt someone yeah yeah I think everybody in that life
00:21:03
has do you want to elaborate on that no you know there's no statute of limitations on
00:21:12
things there's a statute of limitations on most things except for murder yeah yeah it
00:21:24
is so that's a glimpse into some of the kinds of people that M has skills from the Navy and subsequent Talent building
00:21:31
guns opened him up to you know I've always said you just can't dabble you just can't dabble with with
00:21:40
evil people you can't just accidentally get your foot in the door because evil I believe evil can
00:21:51
take you over if you just open that door a bit a little bit more and a little bit
00:21:56
more Micah told his parents about some of the things he'd heard and seen and they were skeptical it was true and it
00:22:04
just seemed like such a bad movie you know it just seemed like an episode of The Sopranos which he loved he loved The
00:22:11
Sopranos and um it was just like really this just doesn't seem like are you sure like he
00:22:19
would tell us about being never mentioned names but he told us about being kidnapped and locked in the trunk
00:22:26
of a car and have having his hands and feet zip tied and being hauled out to an middle of
00:22:34
nowhere in an orchard and have his shoes taken from him and being told to walk back home or
00:22:43
whatever who who hears that we're just we're just middle income Suburban family we're going to work and coming home and
00:22:55
our young adult son is telling us about people locking him in their trunk can holling him to an orchard and holding
00:23:00
the gun to his head what would what would any family think what would your family think if
00:23:06
they heard that story about you keep in mind at this time his family knew Micah was struggling with his
00:23:13
mental health and substance abuse he'd become increasingly paranoid it'd be well
00:23:20
Micah that just sounds pretty far-fetched really I mean we we would make and of course we have a huge guilt
00:23:28
around all of that that we carry with us because we really made light of it and and we didn't believe him and we
00:23:38
begged him to go to the police we begged him if this is real we will go with you
00:23:45
and you need to talk to the police and he wouldn't go he was very very afraid numerous people who spent a lot
00:23:54
of time with Micah in the months before he went missing all described him as parent paranoid and very frightened they
00:24:01
also all mentioned how Micah would see things in this new crowd and he would take on almost a vigilante role this
00:24:08
came up in the previous episode here's Cheryl talking about some information she got after Micah first went missing I
00:24:16
had already gotten two phone calls from two different young women that Micah had
00:24:21
gotten out of uh what we later would know to be trafficking situ situations where they
00:24:29
were being held against their will and were being held to do things with men in order to
00:24:40
um take care of some debt they owed maybe it was for drugs maybe it was for other
00:24:46
things and we knew from these two individuals that Micah had helped them get out of that situation that he had
00:24:54
heard about it he had gotten wind of it and he went and physically got them and I
00:25:05
think that in that La those last few weeks Micah had figured out I'm just going to play both sides of
00:25:13
this fence playing both sides of the fence that is exactly what Matthew Queen said
00:25:20
in his Facebook post it sounded as if Micah was pretending to be cool with people he thought were involved in
00:25:27
trafficking with women while also helping those women at the same time which illustrates the strange delicate
00:25:35
precarious state of his life and his family saw his fear what they thought was just paranoia increasing here's
00:25:43
Cheryl describing one of the last conversations she had with her son he told me someone was trying to kill him
00:25:51
and he had to be as far away from his family from us as possible and I begged him to let me drive him back East to
00:26:00
family at that moment it was real enough in his head that I begged him to let me
00:26:07
take him out of town said nobody will ever find you on the end of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in the
00:26:16
Midwest and his response was but they'll use you and they'll use them to make me come back lives have
00:26:27
been threat threatened not just mine is what he said by them Mah was referring to his ex-wife and his son which led him
00:26:37
to say something he'd never been able to admit before he literally said I hate to
00:26:43
say this but she was right she was right to take custody of him because I know that I've endangered him and she did the
00:26:55
right thing and she will do whatever it takes to protect him after that conversation Cheryl says
00:27:02
she saw Micah one last time in mid-march 2018 he was with a woman named Sarah they appeared to be casually dating but
00:27:12
this isn't the same Sarah who Bailey was friends with and queen started dating this is a different Sarah this Sarah is
00:27:18
Micah's age we're going to refer to her as Sarah G they got in the back of the car and he introduced me and she's very
00:27:28
nice polite he was telling her that uh I didn't listen to music on my radio I listen to always listen to audio books
00:27:38
he was teasing me about that because he very much loved music and uh so it was light-hearted it was
00:27:46
everything was seemed fine and that was the last time I saw him was walking away from me with this
00:27:53
young lady a few days later Micah was with Sarah G again when he called Cheryl he
00:28:00
was very agitated and he said mom Mom I really need your help I was like what do
00:28:07
you need Micah and he said I need to pay for this hotel room for the you know the
00:28:14
friend of mine that I you know that was in the car with me she can't go home and
00:28:19
she has her dogs with her and um I really need to pay for the hotel room Cheryl had recently given Micah
00:28:29
money and she told Micah she didn't understand why his friend needed a room why couldn't they just go back to
00:28:34
Micah's place he's like oh well we just we can't can't go to my place and why can't you why can't you
00:28:43
help me and uh he was very angry at me for not paying for this hotel room for this young
00:28:53
lady and he started yelling at me and I'd had enough I didn't want to hear him yelling
00:29:05
at me and um so I just said Mike I can't I can't talk to you and I hung up but that was the very last time I
00:29:17
talked to him I hung up on him I don't hang up on people anymore I hear people say oh just hang up oh
00:29:33
just hang up and I think don't do it just don't hang up CU it might be the last time that you talk to
00:29:49
them and you'll have to carry that around forever April 1st 2018 came and went without Micah showing up at Joanne
00:29:59
Burrow's home with a yellow rose in hand something was wrong and suddenly every word Micah said to his parents they ever
00:30:08
doubted swallowed them whole in an ocean of guilt we didn't believe him I just didn't believe him and I live we live
00:30:17
with that every day but Cheryl didn't drown in her guilt as she'd simply put it that wasn't an option as his mother
00:30:25
she was going to do whatever it took to find her [Music] son as I was writing this episode I
00:30:36
found a post on Micah's Facebook page from a few years before his disappearance Micah described an
00:30:41
incident in which he and his father thought Cheryl had gone missing the post explains it was a misunderstanding that
00:30:48
ended with the police finding a confused somewhat embarrass Cheryl teaching an econ class at her University as it
00:30:56
turned out Mike and his dad had forgotten that Cheryl was substitute teaching another class that went late
00:31:02
giving her a clear explanation as to why she was nowhere to be found on campus when her usual class ended hours earlier
00:31:10
Micah wrote quote I've never felt more terrified and helpless in my entire life than what I felt this evening ever I
00:31:17
love you so much Mom you're the glue that holds me together I thought about for how that
00:31:24
hour or so Micah felt that hopelessness and fear not knowing where his mother was that she would come to feel for him
00:31:31
a couple years later only it wouldn't be an anecdote to share with Facebook friends for Cheryl it would be life
00:31:39
altering and never ending when Micah wrote the post his life was stable full of love
00:31:45
achievements Milestones so many of a dream of reaching it was unimaginable to think that one day he would struggle
00:31:53
with addiction and lose it all it absolutely can happen to anybody Lance I been married almost 40
00:32:01
years we lived in the suburbs we both had great jobs we took our kids to church they grew up in youth group we
00:32:08
were living the American dream you know and if it can happen to our family it can happen to anybody listening to this
00:32:17
the extent of what would be revealed about the new world Micah found himself in and why he'd vanished would be darker
00:32:24
than anyone could have ever imagined [Music] he had just looked like he was scared
00:32:40
and he wasn't scared for him it looked more like he was scared for me because he knew who who shot him I don't care if
00:32:49
I live or die since this has happened that's next time on the Bakersfield 3 [Music]