Case Becomes a National Cause : Hunt for Laura Bradbury Involves a Growing Army

Three months after their daughter vanished from Joshua Tree National Monument, Mike and Patty Bradbury’s lives are still consumed by the event, riding the roller coaster of hope and despair when leads come in, and overseeing a sophisticated and single-minded volunteer effort to recover the 3-year-old Huntington Beach girl.

Laura Bradbury disappeared on Oct. 18, 1984, near the family campsite, while waiting for her older brother, Travis, outside a portable restroom.

Police in Orlando, Fla., on Jan. 11 arrested a San Diego man in connection with the Oct. 6 attempt to abduct a 6-year-old girl in Encinitas, Calif., and reports Thursday linked the two cases.

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department officials said Friday, however, that they doubt that the suspect, Kenneth L. Shoaf, was involved in the Bradbury case, although they would like to interview him when he is returned to California later this month.

By mid-day Friday, Mike Bradbury was wrapping up television interviews about the news from Florida, and preparing for a brunch he was giving today to thank some of those who volunteered to help turn the case of a missing girl into a cause symbolic of all missing children in America. The hardest part of organizing the brunch, Mike said, was drawing up a guest list of 40 people.

“There’s probably a thousand people I would invite if I could,” he said.

The brunch, at the Claim Jumper restaurant in Fountain Valley, is a good example of how and why people have donated their time, money and services to help find Laura.

When a representative of the volunteers contacted Carl Nickoloff, vice president of the Fountain Valley-based company that owns the restaurant, to reserve a room for the brunch, his son, Craig, the company’s president, offered the room at no charge.

As a group, printers and graphic designers have been especially generous, contributing hundreds of thousands of flyers and bumper stickers bearing Laura’s picture and composite drawings of the pot-bellied, middle-aged man who is suspected of taking her.

“I never empathized with any cause like I have with this,” said Gary Berg of Berg Brothers Photo Silk Screen, Santa Ana. “There are a lot of things we read about that don’t move us, but this moved me,” he said, explaining why his firm had printed 1,000 bumper stickers, and why he personally had passed out flyers at Christmas time.

Berg, who also has a young daughter, said he found the circumstances of the disappearance particularly poignant: “One second you’re a family, and the next, there’s an irreplaceable void.”

Other corporations have cooperated by distributing flyers and bumper stickers in their outlets. These include Toys R Us, Western Airlines and Sav-On Drugs. A country music disc jockey urged long-haul drivers to put the bumper stickers on their trucks, and to post the flyers in truck stops and convenience stores across the country.

Since the afternoon Laura vanished, the volunteers have played a critical role in the effort to find her. That first weekend, when police and park officials thought the girl might have just wandered off, more than 300 people--park visitors, off-duty military personnel from nearby Twentynine Palms and wilderness trackers from around the state--converged on Joshua Tree to aid in the search.

Dropped Everything

For much of that period, Mike and Patty Bradbury and the close relatives who hurried to join them at their Indian Cove campsite were like shell-shocked spectators. When they finally accepted the theory that their daughter had been abducted, the family returned home to Huntington Beach, and their lives changed.

Mike Bradbury put aside his furniture-refinishing business and his usual community activities, and, with the rest of the family, threw himself into the search for his daughter. He received financial support through loans and contributions from family and friends.

First to rally around the family were the parents of Laura’s schoolmates at Hilltop Nursery in Costa Mesa and fellow members of Mariner’s Church in Newport Beach.

“They have been the catalyst, the backbone,” Bradbury declared. He said many, such as Kathy Danner, work 18-hour days to organize and build support.

Before long, the core group’s efforts were extended through an informal network of church and community groups, and through individual members.

Janet Ruffino of Costa Mesa became involved through a friend who was a member of the Bradburys’ church. Bob Nibeel of Fountain Valley was contacted by a former high school classmate who worked for Bradbury in his furniture-refinishing shop.

Ruffino, like many of the other volunteers, was drawn to the search because of her three small children and the circumstances of widely publicized child-stealing cases.

“The thing that struck home to me was that it happened so quickly,” she said. “It can be on your own street, anywhere.”

On the average, Ruffino says, she spends about 20 hours a week making phone calls, addressing envelopes and running errands to help the search.

Nibeel was approached about a month after Laura’s disappearance, and asked to contribute money for bumper stickers.

“That was the start of it,” he said. “I’m a bachelor, I don’t have any kids, but I could imagine what they’re going through.”

At the same time, the Bradbury organization was expanding around the edges. People with no direct relationship to family members or their friends were offering to help.

Patty Breska, Huntington Beach, saw a flyer in a store the day before Thanksgiving.

“I went to the market and there she was (Laura’s picture), staring me in the face,” she recalled. “It really upset me.”

Breska began distributing the flyers at preschools. She contacted some friends who work for the Pennysaver, the weekly shopper, and persuaded them to reprint the information in the publication, and to print up an additional 10,000 flyers. Her union, Retail Clerks 324, agreed to reproduce the flyer in its newsletter.

Chaotic Growth

At one point last month, Bradbury said, the volunteer effort almost became a victim of its own success. Its rapid growth was bordering on chaos.

“It was quite disorganized,” he said.

Richard Peterson, a Santa Ana attorney, had written a letter several weeks after the kidnaping to Kathy Danner, a Hilltop parent and an early leader of the volunteer effort.

Having his own family, Peterson said, “didn’t allow me to rest until I did something” to help find Laura.

What they needed, Danner told Peterson, was a good lawyer. So Peterson drew up a form letter asking for assistance from corporations, and then began following up on the responses. As the weeks passed, with his firm’s support, Peterson’s role grew.

Photo on Milk Boxes

He calls the drive to find Laura and others like her “our movement,” and says he spends about 25 hours a week working for the cause. With the assistance of the Newport Beach office of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher, the group became the Laura Bradbury Organization for Stranger-Abducted Children, and it has filed for tax-exempt status.

Another of Peterson’s plans is to assign to volunteer professionals five corporations each to contact for assistance. Southern California dairies were asked to put Laura’s picture on milk cartons. A full-time director, Ann Harmon, has been hired.

“We’ve had nothing but open arms from the community, businesses and individuals,” Peterson said.

Peterson and Harmon, Mike Bradbury said, “have been helping us find direction, tying up a lot of loose ends.”

What accounts for the outpouring of support for the efforts to find Laura?

Common Threads

A number of common threads ran through interviews with more than a dozen of the volunteers. Many are parents of young children. In addition to the extensive press coverage of the Bradbury case, many have been sensitized to the problems of missing and abused children through dramatic television programs and news accounts.

“Certainly, there has been publicity on this issue,” said Charles Green, a clinical psychologist in private practice who teaches at Orange Coast College. “But people are looking for something good in which to involve themselves. The (Bradbury) case has crystallized a cause, but the underlying motivation is that there is an inherent goodness in people.”