Excerpt: 'Not Lost Forever' by Carmina Salcido

Oct. 13, 2009— -- Twenty years ago -- a vicious massacre shattered the calm of California's beautiful wine country. A 28-year-old vineyard worker went on a killing spree that crossed Sonoma county -- ambushing co-workers, murdering his wife, slashing his in-laws, cutting the throats of his three young daughters and leaving them for dead in a garbage dump.

Seven people died that day, but Ramon Salcido's tiny 3-year old daughter, Carmina, managed to survive 36 hours in the garbage dump before she was rescued.

Carmina Salcido's story, told in her book "Not Lost Forever: My Story of Survival," is not only a tale of survival but of how the massacre affected others, including the detective who investigated it, a reporter who tracked the murderer's trail across 30 miles of wine country and the doctors and nurses who saved Carmina's life and nurtured her back to health.

Carmina tells her story for first time on "20/20." Read an excerpt from her book below.

Watch the story Friday on "20/20" at 10 p.m. ET

As the crowd gathered outside the police cordon, they felt the first waves of a panic that would eventually envelop Sonoma County. Rumors were already beginning to spread: Ramon Salcido had gone crazy. My entire family had been murdered. Ramon was still out there, ready to kill some more.

This was no drug deal gone bad. No foiled burglary that turned violent. It was a case of uncontrolled, unconscionable, inexplicable violence. And the likely suspect was nowhere to be found.

My grandparents' next-door neighbor Colette Thomas stood at the crime scene tape aghast. She and her two girls, Calah and Mary, had met the Richards family one day soon after they moved in, when Grandma was walking past their yard with Ruth and Maria. My young aunts, never shy, introduced themselves.

Thomas noticed right away that the family was "a little different." Grandma told her that she sewed all of her girls' clothing, which was well-made but looked like fashions from the 1950s. Whatever the case, the Richards family seemed happy. The girls laughed a lot; they obviously loved their dad, and were devoted to their mother, with whom they spent most of their days.