Rachel Cooke - Ride For Rachel

Discussion in 'The Search for Rachel Cooke' started by JR, Feb 12, 2002.

  1. JR

    JR FFJ Senior Member

    Ride For Rachel Information

    Flyers can be printed out at:
    http://www.rachelcookesearch.org

    Please fell free to print them out and distribute them regardless of the area you live in. Important, try to target restaurants, gas stations, motels and other places people frequent.
     
  2. JR

    JR FFJ Senior Member

  3. RC

    RC FFJ Senior Member

    Ride for Rachel

    My parents, sisters, cousins and other friends and family members made 100 packets for the drivers last night. Each Ride for Rachel car will have an instruction sheet, 2 windows posters, 2 Spanish flyers, 50 English flyers, a yellow ribbon to wear and a long yellow ribbon to attach to the antenna. Each driver will also receive a map of their area to cover.

    We even made 5 media packets with the same contents plus a map of all of the planned routes. High school students are handling the major cites and we are taking care of the highways and smaller cites and towns.

    I owe you some hugs tomorrow JR.

    I am praying that this helps to bring Rachel home.
    RC
     
  4. JR

    JR FFJ Senior Member

    Ride For Rachel

    RC as you know I got your hugs as well as a bunch of other ones today.

    Ride For Rachel went well. The turn out was good though not as large as I would have expected. The day was perfect for us with temperatures in the mid seventies. I believe all areas surrounding Austin got covered. RC will have to status us on those longer rides such as Houston and Dallas.

    My friend Cowboy and I took the assignment to take 290 from South Austin over to Johnson City. We were through Johnson City and into Marble Falls by about 2:15 hitting boths sides of 290 so called and asked if there was any area in that direction that had not been covered but would bring us back to Georgetown. RC assigned us a very scenic route coming home. RC - it was a gorgeous drive and an area I had never seen. Thanks!

    Folks were very accomodating. Not one store, bank, gas station etc., refused to allow us to post a flyer. We got lots of waves and tumbs up throughout the day. When we stopped at Albertson's on 290 in South Austin, they made an additional 26 copies (setting one aside for a "Master") and were going to ask the folks running an early voter booth the hand them out to those who came to vote today.

    A gas station we stopped at on our new route home had me use their copier to make some additional copies to go in their other stations. Our 50 posters ended up being more like 85 by the time we got done.

    By the way RC, Cowboy plans to cover Harker Heights tomorrow and Evant during the week when he goes to his ranch.

    This is the check in area for Ride For Rachel.

    Copyright ©2002 Jacqueline L. Riggs
     
  5. JR

    JR FFJ Senior Member

    The morning news covered Ride For Rachel

    This was one of the news teams covering the ride. I didn't catch which station this was. Maybe RC can share what stations were there this morning.

    Copyright ©2002 Jacqueline L. Riggs
     
  6. JR

    JR FFJ Senior Member

    Ride For Rachel

    Some rider's waiting for everyone to get checked in.

    Copyright ©2002 Jacqueline L. Riggs
     
  7. JR

    JR FFJ Senior Member

    Having a quick snack

    Milk, juice, donuts and other goodies were available.

    Copyright ©2002 Jacqueline L. Riggs
     
  8. JR

    JR FFJ Senior Member

    Still more "riders"

    Copyright ©2002 Jacqueline L. Riggs
     
  9. JR

    JR FFJ Senior Member

    The scenic route home

    We stopped on a side road and Cowboy took this shot.

    Copyright ©2002 Cowboy
     
  10. JR

    JR FFJ Senior Member

    Rachel T-shirts

    Unfortunately, I failed to get a closeup of the t-shirts, but noted all family members were wearing them today. Thanks Dun for your help - as you can see the design did get larger before the shirts were printed. Some buttons were made and handed out today as well.

    :yellow: Praying today brought us a step closer to bringing Rachel home.

    Copyright ©2002 Jacqueline L. Riggs
     
  11. RC

    RC FFJ Senior Member

    Ride for Rachel

    I think we had around 60 cars and motorcycles show up. Those included about 100 people because most cars had two people in them.

    JR I have both a tee shirt and pin for you. I thought I gave you a tee shirt. We are going to make some more pins up with the web site printed on them but I have a Ride for Rachel pin now for you.

    That news team was KEYE channel 42. The reporter is Jennie Blankenship and she has been wonderful! Channels 7 KTBC FOX7, 8 and 36 KXAN also came and everyone did and excellent broadcast. Channel 36, KXAN, even did a live remote with their morning show. For some reason channel 24, KVUE, did not send out a camera crew and they used previous film footage. KVUE has been excellent is the past so I can't be upset with them.

    We are going to post the routes that didn't get covered on the web site. Hopefully people will
    cover those on a one on one basis.

    Thanks for taking the great pictures and taking
    the two routes. I'm glad you enjoyed the 1431 drive.

    RC
     
  12. RC

    RC FFJ Senior Member

    Ride for Rachel Coverage

    This is from he News 8 website
    http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/?SecID=2&ArID=27689

    Still searching for Rachel Cooke
    Updated: 2/23/02 3:34 PM
    By: Antonio Castelan and Web Staff

    Family and friends are still searching
    for Rachel Cooke, the 19-year-old
    who went missing in Georgetown
    last month.

    She was last seen jogging near her
    parent’s home on Jan. 10. For
    weeks, search teams combed the
    area near where she disappeared,
    but turned up with nothing. Since
    then, her family has posted flyers,
    run television commercials and
    highlighted her picture across an I-35 billboard.

    Though it’s been more than a month, they still haven’t given up.

    On Saturday dozens of volunteers will travel to major cities throughout Texas, posting flyers all along the way. Cooke's family has also upped the
    reward to $50,000.

    Rachel’s grandparents, Glenn and Louise Cooke, drove an hour to Burnet on Saturday, part of the 60-car fleet of volunteers that covered a 200-mile
    radius from Georgetown.

    "We are just doing everything conceivable we can do to bring Rachel back," her grandfather said.

    The group is replacing old flyers with new ones that indicate the increased reward. The new flyers also have an updated description of Rachel; she
    has tattoos of two heart-shaped cherries on her left shoulder and a black star on her foot.

    There's also a sketch of a man police want to question.

    "We think it's imperative to get the info out everywhere that we can,†Glenn said. “Because we know that the more exposure is given, the more
    possibility someone will with information."

    "This is the hardest period of our lives,†Rachel’s father, Robert Cooke, said. “I don't think you could go anything worse than this -- not knowing where Rachel is, if she is dead or alive."

    If you have information about Rachel Cooke's disappearance, please call the Williamson County Crime Stoppers at 1-800-253-STOP.

    RC
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 15, 2002
  13. JR

    JR FFJ Senior Member

    RC

    :yellow:

    Wow - sure didn't seem like 60 cars but you did mention some had already left.

    You handed me a pin at the church and mentioned the T-shirt but about that time the news team grabbed you. I know I will be seeing all of you again and look forward to receiving my shirt, which I will treasure forever and hope to wear as I hug Rachel when we bring her home.


    I looked at the News8 link and watched the video. Their coverage was wonderful in my opinion.

    Please give Janet, Aunt Elain, Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Lanny and everyone I have failed to mention here a big hug for me.

    By the way, we were very impressed with the prayer circle on Saturday. I didn't catch which uncle offered the prayer but he did a beautiful job. :yellow:
     
  14. RC

    RC FFJ Senior Member

    Prayer

    My brother David said the prayer. He is a Baptist minister in Devine, Texas. Fox 7 KTBC went on the drive with him.

    I think we had like 5 motorcycles and 50-55 cars. I rounded it off at 60. The motorcycles left when I was doing an interview so there may have been more. I counted 5 pulling in.

    We did another search Sunday afternoon and will probably do another one next weekend.

    Thanks for your prayer too Angel.

    RC
     
  15. RC

    RC FFJ Senior Member

    This is from The University of Texas Newspaper "The Daily Texan"
    Volunteers spread search for missing Georgetown woman throughout Texas By Esther Wang (Daily Texan Staff)
    February 25, 2002
    More than 60 family, friends and concerned
    individuals drove throughout Texas to post fliers
    for Rachel Cooke Saturday, as the search for the
    missing Georgetown woman intensified.
    The searchers participated in "Ride for Rachel,"
    an event organized by those close to Cooke who
    wanted to spread the search to the rest of the state. They posted fliers with updated information in shop windows to bring news of her disappearance to places where people may not have heard of the case.

    The 19-year-old student, who attended Mesa Junior College in California, disappeared on the morning of Jan. 10 while jogging near her home in Georgetown. More than six weeks later, investigators still don't know how she disappeared or where she might be, and no clues have surfaced.

    "There are still an incredible amount of people who do not know, and the only way they might know is if they see a flier in a store window somewhere," said Robert Cooke, Rachel's father.

    Inspiration for the drive came from one of Robert Cooke's co-workers at IBM, who said he wanted to drive his motorcycle from Oklahoma to Mexico and post fliers about Rachel's disappearance.

    Kelly Mehan and Ben Hepworth, two other co-workers, began planning the event with help
    from the Cooke family. Taking time off from work, the two assembled 130 routes that would take searchers from Georgetown to as far as the Texas Panhandle and the coast.

    The appeal for drivers and helpers brought out a diverse gathering of volunteers, who ranged from a trio of black-leather clad, church-going Harley Davidson riders to Cooke's high school friends and people who hadn't known the family but simply wanted to help.

    Austin resident Andy Hoover heard of the drive from a friend who worked with Robert Cooke and brought his son along early Saturday morning.
    "We just want to help out our neighbors in need here," Hoover said. His route took him to
    Temple, where he posted fliers for more than six hours.

    Many of Cooke's relatives also came out, wearing T-shirts a local printer had donated for the search.

    Cooke's family said the past six weeks have been very difficult.

    At the beginning of the search, they were optimistic that a private search party, Texas
    EquuSearch, would find her. But since EquuSearch removed themselves from the search two weeks ago, the family's cautious optimism that Cooke would be found alive turned to the hope of simply learning the details of her disappearance.

    "I think we're clinging to the hope that there is a possibility Rachel is still alive and that
    someone is holding her somewhere for whatever reason," said Elaine Hettenhausen, Rachel's aunt. "But we do realize that with each passing day, that hope is fainter and fainter."

    While Cooke's parents have slowly but surely resumed a more normal routine over the past
    few weeks as they start to go back to work, they say their lives will never go back to the way they were. They need to keep on searching for their loved one, if only to reach some closure, they said.

    "Doing projects like Ride for Rachel helps, because I feel like I'm doing something to try to
    bring her back instead of just sitting around and waiting for a clue," Robert Cooke said. "I'm
    actually going out there and possibly generating clues."

    And he needs to feel like he's doing something - anything to help find his missing daughter,
    he said. Since EquuSearch left, a Web site has been set up with information about the search, a billboard was erected in Austin, and the reward has been doubled to $50,000.

    Despite those efforts, however, no clues have been found, and all leads have led nowhere.

    But her parents said they won't stop looking until they find her.

    "Sometimes part of me thinks she's just in California going to school, and she'll call me up," said Janet Cooke, wearing a gold necklace that says "Mom," which Rachel Cooke gave to
    her a few years ago. "But it is very real, and until she's home one way or the other I'm not
    going to stop looking. We can't. No mother could."


    RC
     
  16. JR

    JR FFJ Senior Member

    Bump

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