Long gone
Decades drag on for family, friends of missing woman
DAVISON TOWNSHIP
THE FLINT JOURNAL FIRST EDITION
Sunday, April 30, 2006
By Ron Fonger
rfonger@flintjournal.com • 810.766.6317
Anyone with information about missing person Paulette Jaster of Davison is asked to call state police Detective Sgt. Stephen Sipes at (810) 732-0740.
Getting help
To talk to a professional about mental illness, contact Genesee County Community Mental Health at (810) 257-3740. Calls are answered around the clock.
DAVISON - Paulette Jaster was a homecoming queen candidate and one of the best female players ever to lace up a pair of Converse hightops for Davison High School.
She was smart - a National Honor Society member - and heartbreakingly attractive, with flowing dark hair and brown eyes.
And for nearly three decades, she has been missing - presumed neither dead nor alive - leaving her family to assume the worst even though they hope they are wrong.
"I think she's dead, ... a body that's been buried," said Paulette's father, Edwin, sipping a cup of coffee as he thumbed through old papers that remind him of his daughter's story.
There is a court petition to commit her to Ypsilanti State Hospital in 1977, an ad from a Florida newspaper offering a reward for information, letters to television shows desperately asking for help.
In May, it will be 27 years since Edwin Jaster, 85, last saw his daughter. His ex-wife, Caroline, died last year, still chasing rumors about Paulette sightings. His other children are scattered throughout the country, and he still hopes Paulette, who would be 52 now, is somewhere out there, too.
"Wouldn't it be nice if she was found someplace?" he asked.
Jaster's eyes brightened at the thought - the same possibility that drives Paulette's sisters to keep recalling the sometimes painful memories about their sibling who started showing signs of mental illness almost overnight and walked away from home early one morning, never to return.
Paulette faded away, never using her Social Security number after 1980, never contacting her family or her closest friends and still suffering from the schizophrenia that hit her hard at about the time she graduated from Davison High School.
Paulette was 25 when she left Davison on foot May 12, 1979, headed toward I-69, carrying an old Army backpack, wearing jeans and a favorite turquoise ring.
"She may be with the Lord by now," said Pam Atkinson, a younger sister who lives in the Bridgeport area. "I believe she was alive (as recently as) 1989. I believe (that) in my gut."
more at:
http://www.childseeknetwork.com/foru...pic.php?t=3839
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