Rachel Cooke - A Father's Daily Journal

A new design

I may order some of the following design of bumper stickers. The lettering may be too small to read.

 

Very nice designs.

Bumper stickers are a good idea. Posters stay in one place. Bumper stickers move around. Do you know any cross-country truck drivers who would help by using them?

 

Bumper stickers

RC, I really like the new one you are considering!

Lurker and Moab, great ideas. Let's get Rachel's picture out there!

 

Truck drivers

I really like the idea for placing Rachel's bumper stickers on cross-country trucks LurkerXIV. Thanks for checking wiht Simon, Moab. I will have some people contact the others.

We have a lunch wagon company here that put Rachel's flyer on the back of all 75 of their trucks. We have seen them around here put if the trucking companies will allow it, they could take Rachel's story all over the USA.

Lori Bible and I decided to replace the Help find Rachel Cooke with Remember Rachel Cooke on the next batch of stickers. That is our new solgan.

 

RC's Journal

RC has updated his journal. It currently includes his and Janet's trip to the president's conference on missing and exploited children.

http://rachelcookesearch.org/journal.html

 

The Club

I was asked to document the speech I made last week to The
TEXAS LEGISLATIVE CAUCUS FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED
CHILDREN.

The Club, by Robert Cooke

When I first met Tim Miller, director of Texas EquuSearch, he told me my wife Janet and I are now in a special club. It's a club no one wants to join. It's a club of sorrow and grief. It's the club of parents and families of missing children.

The club is full of emotions. There is anger at the person who took your loved one. Frustration exist from trying to convince law enforcement your daughter did not leave on her own. In our case, there is additional frustration because we were turned down by more than two out of every three agencies because Rachel was 19 when she disappeared, two years older than most agencies accept. For you see, in the missing person world, the value of a human life decreases at age 18.

Many sleepless nights occur in the club. When you are able to sleep and you awake, you wake up to a reality far worse than any nightmare. The guilt is overwhelming. Why was I not there to protect her? Why didn't I teach her how to protect herself? I am her father; it was my job to protect her.

The worst feeling of all is the helplessness. What can I do? What haven't I done? We've posted thousands of flyers and passed out bumper stickers and buttons, but nothing has brought Rachel home.

Well, I say it's time to reduce the membership drive for this club. It's time to teach our kids to be more aware of their environment and how to protect themselves. It's time to keep sexual offenders in prison and if they are paroled, monitor them closely. We need to train law enforcement to better differentiate between those who left on their own and those who might have been abducted. We need to have alerts in place that cover all ages of missing persons. We need to bring our missing loved ones home and put the lowlife animals who take them in prison and keep them there.

 

Darrell LaMoure

Here are a series of pictures of Darrell Lamoure's NASCAR.

 

NASCAR

A close up of the hood. (bonnet for Angel)

 

NASCAR

Pit stop

 

NASCAR

On the track.

 

Thanks for keeping

us up to date, RC. This must all just be surreal to you and your family, I can't even imagine. Thankfully, there are people who are willing to help.

 

NASCAR Pics

A closeup

 

RC

How long will Darrell keep Rachel's picture on the car (was it just for the one race?)

Also you didn't tell us if Darrell won or not. He certainly deserved to.

 

The race

Darrell came in 15th place out of around 30 cars that finished. Around 10 of the cars wrecked or dropped out fro mechanical. reasons.

Usually the picture is on for just one race. There are a lot of missing people out there.

 

RC

Thanks for the update. Maybe all of the NASCAR drivers will follow Darrell's example in the future.

 

New Collage

I added a new collage of Rachel someone sent me to rachelcookesearch.org. http://www.rachelcookesearch.org/collage.html

 

RC

The collage is absolutly beautiful! Thank you for sharing it.