Looking for Michaela Garecht: Mother Hopes Jaycee Dugard Case Will Lead to Her Daughter
Mother of missing girl is hoping for clues after break in Jaycee Dugard case.
Sept. 16, 2009— -- Sharon Murch is watching the search at Phillip and Nancy Garrido's home with a renewed flicker of hope, hoping against all odds that her daughter Michaela, stolen 21 years ago, will emerge from the sheds and tents of that nightmarish back yard.
Miracles are possible, Murch reasons, because Jaycee Dugard was rescued 18 years after she was allegedly snatched by the Garridos.
"When Jaycee was found my first thought was 'Please God let Michaela be with her," Shannon Murch told "Good Morning America" today.
She is clinging to that hope as detectives from the California towns of Hayward and Dublin search through the Garrido property for clues to the disappearance of other young girls.
The disappearance of Michaela, who was kidnapped from Hayward, Calif., in 1988, is one of two missing children cases that police believe could be connected to the couple who is accused of kidnapping Jaycee Dugard and holding her in a backyard laybrinth of sheds and tents for 18 years.
The other child, 13-year-old Ilene Misheloff vanished from Dublin just months later, in January 1989, after taking a short cut across a creek bed on her way home from school.
Michaela was just 9 years old when she was snatched in broad daylight after she and her friend were allowed to take their scooters to a nearby the grocery store. It was the first time Michaela was allowed to take the trip on her own.
"To live with a hope that is continuously unfulfilled is really one of the most difficult things in the world," Murch said. "For awhile it was easier for me to believe she was in a better place than this, where she is not in pain."
And for a time, Murch said, she lost hope of ever finding her daughter. But when the Garridos were arrested in the Dugard case, she got a call from the friend who was with Michaela that day saying the grey sedan authorities impounded looked like the car Michaela was pulled into.
Murch said she's also buoyed by reports that a neighbor called authorities years ago to say there were five little blonde girls in the Garrido's backyard. Jaycee Dugard and her two daughters born in captivity would account for three.
"It just seems as though there's a spotlight being shone on Michaela and there must be a reason for it," she said.
And if Michaela Garecht is still alive, Murch said she has a message for her.
"Michaela if you're out there and you can hear my voice, I just want you to know that I love you," she said. "There's nothing that you could have gone through in these last 20 years that we could not overcome."
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