HAYWARD, Calif. -- As family members and neighbors watched silently, a network television crew re-enacted Monday last month's kidnapping of a 9-year-old Hayward girl outside her neighborhood grocery store.
For police, who have worked fruitlessly for more than two weeks to find clues to the disappearance of Michaela Joy Garecht, the taping of the 'Unsolved Mysteries' segment for NBC television meant the possibility of getting a much-needed lead.
But for Sharon Garecht, the missing girl's mother, it was another reminder of her daughter's absence.
'I have thought about what happened to her so many times since that Saturday morning,' Garecht said as she watched the filming. 'I can't believe I am watching it. I just hope it helps.'
The five-minute re-enactment, which will be aired Dec. 21, featured child actors playing Michaela and her 9-year-old best friend, Trina Rodriguez, as well as a scruffy man with shoulder-length, dirty-blond hair playing the kidnapper.
They showed the man use a red scooter that Michaela had ridden as bait, grab her by the waist and stuff her into his older-model gold car, then speed away.
Witnesses had described those as the series of events that occurred Nov. 19.
After the taping, Garecht said, 'It was hard to watch, very emotional. But I am glad I came.'
Garecht complained that the young actress did not resemble her daughter, but Hayward Police Lt. Chuck Breazeale declined to comment on any possible discrepencies.
'It was fairly accurate,' he said. 'We did not expect every minute detail to be correct. We just hope that someone will see this and that something in it will jog someone's memory so they can call us.'
Sharon McGinn, the show's producer, said that nine of the 60 crimes so far depicted on the show have been solved.
The girl's father called the show 'a good idea. A lot of people watch this show who do not watch the news or read the papers.
'It is just so strange standing here in the parking lot,' Rod Garecht continued. 'It was more than two weeks ago that she was taken. It seems like yesterday.'
