Worried Mother Prays to Find 2 Missing Girls at Grateful Dead Concert

It was not my idea to go to Disneyland. That was the fondest wish of my two German nephews, who were visiting for the holidays with my sister and parents.

“Are you sure you want to go there?” I asked the boys in my rusty foreign language. “It’s very commercial.”

Their eyes lit up. Commercial obviously was the magic word. “Unbedingt, “ absolutely, they said in unison. Without fail.

The day after Christmas, the eight of us--including my own two children--stood inside the Magic Kingdom’s gates. As I looked at the throngs in front of me, I realized it would be a miracle if at least one of us didn’t get lost.

I then pointed to a large Christmas tree. If anyone gets separated, I said first in English and then in German, this is where he should wait. The children nodded impatiently. Before I could ask if they understood, they set off.

As the children skipped from ride to ride and laughed at “Goofy und sein Freund Mickey,” I forgot all about our meeting spot.

Until, that is, I turned around after a parade had passed. My 7-year-old son was gone.

As we pushed our way through the elbow-to-elbow crowds toward the entrance, I commanded myself not to panic. This was Disneyland, I said over and over again. Bad things don’t happen at Disneyland.

But a voice inside my head had doubts.

Just then I spotted him, standing in front of the appointed Christmas tree. Tears of relief sprang to my eyes.

“Would you have left me if you couldn’t find me?” he asked in a shaky voice.

I shook my head. “Never,” I said. “I’d never stop looking for you.”

“Well, what if someone said you had to eat a bowl of mushrooms before you could find me?” he asked. “You hate mushrooms.”

“Even then,” I said.

“Even if you had to eat all the mushrooms in the world?”

“Even then,” I said.

I’d do whatever it would take, I thought. Which is what one Newbury Park mother is prepared to do if her missing child doesn’t return home soon.

*

Janice Christensen’s 14-year-old daughter Chelsea disappeared on Dec. 18, along with her best friend, 15-year-old Kristy Cox. Chelsea and Kristy are both honor students at Newbury Park High School, where Chelsea is vice president of her ninth-grade class.

Both of the girls’ parents believe they are with two teen-age boys who left the Juvenile Restitution Center (JRC) in Ventura on Dec. 17 and stole a BMW later that night.

But Janice Christensen said nothing is certain, and the only lead she has is that the four might be headed to an upcoming Grateful Dead concert in northern California.

And none of it, she added, makes any sense.

“Kristy was madly in love with Kevin, one of the boys in JRC, and he had told people he was going to Oakland to follow the Dead. But Chelsea had never even met the other boy,” she said. “And she’s never even talked about the Dead.

“There was no argument, nothing wrong at home, nothing. Two days before Chelsea left, I took her to a party with her girlfriends. She had asked for guitar lessons for Christmas.”

Janice Christensen doesn’t want to think about what Christmas held for her daughter. Chelsea isn’t lost in Disneyland. There is no appointed tree. And she doesn’t even know if her daughter wants to be found.

“She could be in Oakland. Or Humboldt. There’s a lot of danger out there for a 14-year-old,” she said.

“I was in the closet crying for the first few days, but if I go in the closet and wait and fall apart, I won’t find her.”

A Sheriff’s Department spokesman said deputies have been told to look for the girls locally, and other agencies have been notified about the girls’ disappearance. But Sgt. Dave Page indicated that the situation now is similar to thousands of runaway cases across the country.

“Don’t worry,” Page said. “They’ll show up. They always do.”

*

That’s not good enough for Janice Christensen. If her daughter isn’t back home by the time school starts, she said, she is taking things into her own hands.

She already has sent telegrams and letters to Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia, asking him to help. She’s bought tickets to the group’s upcoming concert in Humboldt. Soon she will be heading down to Venice to buy a Grateful Dead T-shirt, some old jeans, love beads and a floppy hat to blend in with the crowd.

“A Deadhead I talked to said younger Deadheads would be impressed with someone in her 40s who followed the group and that they’d help me,” she said.

And tonight, on New Year’s Eve, either she or her husband will be standing in front of the Oakland Coliseum, where she’s been told a lot Deadheads will gather to hear another group.

“Ten thousand people isn’t a lot,” she said. “I’ll take those odds.”

She choked back a sob. “I don’t care what it takes. I’ll find her.”