A Mother and Her Daughter

            Believe it or not, this blog doesn’t pay the bills for me yet. For my day job, I’m a manager at a shoe store. I was working this past Friday evening when a young lady walked in pushing her young daughter on a stroller. At that point, the only thing odd about them was the fact that they weren’t Canadian (we had been flooded with shoppers from north of the border all day). They immediately made their way over to the kid’s section.

            After a couple of minutes, I popped over to them to see if I could offer any assistance. The mother explained that they were looking for “Dora the Explorer” shoes, because Dora was her daughter’s favorite cartoon character. Sometimes when you get parents with young kids in the store past 8pm, they can be a little grouchy, but that wasn’t the case here. The young mother was completely invested in taking care of her child. Her daughter was very well behaved, never once crying or showing any form of discontent. Mom had to keep pulling her pants up because she didn’t have a belt on. I’m guessing remembering that was secondary to making sure she had food, clothes, and other baby items packed with her. Just in the ten minutes I spent helping her out, I could tell that this wasn’t a woman burdened by parenthood. After checking the computer for sizes that we were missing, and then cashing her out, the mother and daughter left the store around 8:30pm.

            I probably have close to 100 interactions like that on a busy day, but those events came back to me in a big way when I saw the front page of my local paper Tuesday morning. I had heard of the “missing mother” story out of North Conway, but had missed the local news on television and hadn’t seen her face. After seeing the paper, I realized that the mother I had assisted late Friday night was Krista Dittmeyer, who has now been missing for over three days. After informing the police of my interaction with her that evening, the officer I spoke with told me that as of now, I was the last person to have contact with her before she disappeared.

            I don’t have any relevant information about where she went. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even learn her name that evening. I felt it was important for the police to know that she wasn’t scared or odd acting at the time I was assisting here. Perhaps it’s important for some of you to know that too. I hope and pray that Krista can be reunited with her daughter.  

            UPDATE - For those of you that haven't heard, authorities announced that Krista's body was found at a pond in North Conway. May she rest in peace.