Monday, February 15, 1999
Helping hand extended for Erica
Grandmother joins search 50 miles off
BY TOM O'NEILL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
In the name of a 9-year-old girl with whom she has no connection, grandmother Bunny Scott on Sunday morning grabbed the phone and built a bridge from Sedamsville to Kettering.
She wants to help find Erica Baker, the Kettering girl who's been missing for eight days now.
MISSING: ERICA BAKER
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 Erica Baker is 9 years old, 3 feet, 11 inches tall and weighs 65 pounds. She was last seen wearing a pink rain jacket, a pink Winnie-the-Pooh sweatshirt, blue jeans and white tennis shoes. She has blond hair and hazel eyes.
Information about Erica has been posted with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at: www.missingkids.com.
Anyone with information should call the Kettering police at (937) 296-2555, or (937) 296-2570, or email to erica@siscom.net.
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Ms. Scott's motive: she's a grandmother. The missing kid could be hers, she explained. Or yours.
To the pleasant surprise of Kettering police, Ms. Scott asked if they would mail her the missing girl's photo, which Patrolman Dave Denney, the Kettering officer who took her call, quickly did.
Ms. Scott said Sunday she'll make several hundred photocopies, then plaster the missing girl's picture on as many flat surfaces as she can find on the West Side.
On a day in which police announced no significant leads into Erica's weeklong disappearance, their hearts were warmed by a woman 50 miles away who only wants to help.
“Who says she's not around here,” said Ms. Scott, who was moved to call police by newspaper accounts of the suspected abduction of the Kettering girl with blond hair and hazel eyes. “If you have kids, you care.”
Calls continue to pour into the Kettering Police hot line, but as of Sunday afternoon, no new leads were developed, according to department spokesman Larry Warren. Erica's parents submitted to polygraph “lie-detector” tests this weekend and the results were favorable to them, Mr. Warren said.
Meanwhile, police still are focusing on identifying and interviewing two people seen near where Erica disap peared from Indian Riffle Park: a female jogger in black spandex with a white turtleneck and a tan hat, and a man in a dark raincoat walking his dog, a black-longhair, possibly a spaniel.
Ms. Scott, 46, whose fourth grandchild is expected in May, became involved in a similar search last year. When she heard about the missing 6-year-old Mary Love of Colerain Township, Ms. Scott and her daughter joined the field search. Mary was found dead elsewhere, but the devastation of that news doesn't deter her in Erica's mystery.
“I don't believe this little girl is dead,” Ms. Scott said. “I really don't.”
Besides, she pointed out Sunday, doing nothing to help has its own kind of heartbreak.
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