SPECIAL: The Leap: Little Girl Lost

This week on The California Report Magazine, we bring you a story that actually starts in Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday, Dec. 9, 1984. That’s a day that Beth McGhee will never forget. The Friday before, her 3-year-old daughter Neola packed up the homemade cabbage patch doll Beth made for her, and set off for a weekend with her father, Beth’s estranged husband, Tom. The next day, Beth tried to call, to check in, but there was no answer. They’d disappeared. For this entire show, we hear about Beth’s search for her daughter. A longer version of this story first aired on The Leap, a podcast about people who make dramatic, risky changes. That day — when Beth discovered her daughter had been abducted by her husband — the concussive waves from that day are still being felt here in California, more than three decades later.