Deerfield family fears for missing daughter
Christine Walters, 23, was last seen in California in November
DEERFIELD -- At 23, Christine Walters was figuring out who she wanted to be.
Friends and family hope she's still out there, embracing nature and taking a break from traditional society.
But two months after the Deerfield High School graduate was last seen in northern California, they're increasingly frightened.
Both a private investigator hired this month by Walters' family and a detective with the Humboldt County Sheriff's Department, a rural area 300 miles north of San Francisco known for its redwood forests and Pacific coastline, say they have not ruled out foul play but also think she may return.
"I'm still looking at everything," said Chris Cook, a private investigator based in Eureka, Calif., a city of about 25,000 residents on U.S. 101 in Humboldt County.
For Walter's parents and sister in Deerfield, and former high school teachers, classmates and friends at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, that's something to cling to.
Humboldt County Sheriff's Department investigator Dan Paris, whose office took over the case Dec. 4 after Walters was reported missing Nov. 17 in Eureka, said he is "particularly hopeful" and gives Walters a "better than 50-50 chance" of returning.
"I really feel there is a chance that she is out there," agreed Cook.
But Paris also warned that "bad things happen."
Walters' trek to the West Coast began innocently.
In July, she bought a round-trip ticket to Portland, Ore., to visit a friend for about three weeks.
She was set to return to UW-Stevens Point in the fall. Before leaving Wisconsin, she and her mother decorated a bedroom in the house she was to share with friends in September.
But toward the end of the Portland trip, she called her parents and said she wanted to stay on the West Coast a little longer to travel to Northern California.
Friends and family who were regularly in touch with her in late summer and early fall said Walters fell in love with the area's natural beauty and a lifestyle that embraced it.
It fit with recent changes she had made: embracing natural foods and thrift store clothing, eschewing makeup and working on an organic farm in Stevens Point.
While still in Wisconsin, she taught Pilates and yoga in Deerfield and at Madison's Princeton Club, and had been offered a similar job in Stevens Point.
And it appears that in California, in addition to reveling in the landscape and summertime music festivals, she had connected with a spiritual group. She told a Stevens Point friend via a MySpace message that she had attended a shamanic gathering.
"She was getting back in touch with herself," said UW-Stevens Point student Toni Osiecki, whose final MySpace message from Walters came in early October. Osiecki said Walters apologized then for a lapse in messages, saying she had "been off the grid for a while."
"I can totally imagine her being completely content living day-to-day," Osiecki said.
But investigators say other evidence points to something more sinister.
Walters' belongings -- including identification, money and a large backpack borrowed from Osiecki -- were found after her disappearance at a spiritual center in Arcata, Calif., a small town near Eureka. Investigators say the center's owner knew Walters and told them it was not uncommon for her to leave her belongings there while taking long walks in an adjacent redwood forest.
Cook and Paris said a deeply disturbing incident on Nov. 12 adds urgency to the case.
That morning, Walters was found on the doorstep of an isolated rural home outside Arcata, confused and wearing no clothes, her skin cut by briars, Cook said. "She was not herself."
Walters was treated at a local hospital but would not say what happened, Cook said. Police didn't feel her mental health warranted detaining her. No drugs were found in her system.
She was later taken to a nearby hotel and was last seen in the area two days later. Her family reported her missing on Nov. 17.
Anita Walters said because of privacy laws, she and her husband, Dean, did not know the extent of the Nov. 12 incident until after their daughter went missing.
Looking back, Anita Walters said she now she sees other, earlier red flags. "I should have gotten on a plane and brought her back," she said Monday from the family's home outside of Deerfield, a close-knit village of 2,000 in eastern Dane County.
As autumn wore on, Walters said the normally close relationship she had with her daughter waned. Telephone calls became less frequent.
Dreams that Christine had expressed when she first got to California, about opening her own yoga studio and perhaps building eco-villages, no longer came up. She wasn't working consistently and asked her parents for money, which they sent and almost all of which remains today untouched in her bank account.
Family, friends and former Deerfield teachers say the 5-foot-2, 115-pound, strawberry-blond Walters was a good student with a good head on her shoulders. She made friends easily and exuded an energy that drew people to her. Investigators have found that during her brief stay in Humboldt County, she made many friends, and it hasn't been hard to find people who remember her.
"She has a really bright spirit," Osiecki said.
"There was a kind of energy she gave out," Anita Walters agreed. "You would remember her."
Michelle Jensen, current superintendent of the Deerfield schools who was principal at Deerfield Middle School when Walters was a student, remembers her as "very friendly" and said she "had a way of making people feel comfortable around her."
"She was very easy to get along with," Jensen said.
But both Jensen and Anita Walters also said Christine Walters tended to be too trusting, and that may have gotten her into trouble in California. Her mother acknowledges that she was "trusting to a fault" and still learning to be a good judge of character.
Yet while Jensen concurs with that assessment, she also remembers Walters as being "really sure of herself" and not the type to be lured into a bad situation without thinking about how to get out.
"She would be thinking about her options, what is my next step ... the Christine I know would do that, anyway," Jensen said.
Both Cook and Paris said they continue to get fresh leads, and Cook called Walters' disappearance a "priority case."
"We are making progress," Cook said Monday. "We have some new leads, some as recently as today."
But Anita Walters said the wait is torturous.
"It drives you crazy after a while. It just drives you insane," she said. "Why didn't I ask more questions? I just accepted everything as it happened. Now, I wish I hadn't."
Help find Christine Walters
Donations: A fund has been set up at the Bank of Deerfield to help the family of Christine Walters pay for a private investigator to find her. Donations can be sent to the bank's Christine Walters Fund at 15 S. Main St., Deerfield WI, 53531.
If you have information: Any tips about Walters can be given to Humboldt County Sheriff's Department investigator Dan Paris at (707) 445-7251, or dparis@co.humboldt.ca.us.
Private investigator Chris Cook can be reached at (707) 616-4507.
The Walters family can be reached at (608) 764-5850.
For more information: A MySpace page at www.myspace.com/findchristine5558188, contains photos and information about Walters and her disappearance.
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Christine Walters of Deerfield, who had been in California, has not been heard from since November.
