No new clues as search for disabled woman ramps up
by David L. Teibel on Feb. 20, 2008, under Local, Special
Fliers on the mailbox at the home of missing Kay Read are similar to the ones being distributed door to door by friends and family members.
An intense police search began Tuesday for any sign of a woman missing from her home since Thursday night or Friday morning.
Tucson police searched areas around South Kolb and East Golf Links roads as friends and family members of 62-year-old Kay Frances Read passed out fliers with her description and a plea for anyone knowing her whereabouts to call 911 or 88-CRIME, said her brother Wes Read
Read’s sister Mary Seagle described her sister as 5 feet 2, with brownish, blond hair falling 3 to 4 inches below her shoulder.
She has hazel eyes and a noticeably hunched back from a childhood bout with polio.
The search centered on the area around South Kolb and East Golf Links Road. It was expected to resume Wednesday.
No trace of Read has been found, said Sgt. Fabian Pacheco, a police spokesman.
“We’re all a mess,” Wes Read said of the family’s emotions as the clock ticks away in the missing person case and no sign of Kay Read is found.
He said, “We still have hope we can find her.”
Pacheco, a former homicide detective, would not say the woman is presumed dead.
But, he said of the lack of any trace of Kay Read for the last four days, “Time plays a major factor as in any missing person case.”
“We continue to be optimistic and hope for the best, but we prepare for the worst,” Pacheco said.
Pacheco said about 25 officers and detectives, assisted by state Department of Public Safety officers and members of the Pima County Search and Rescue Association, conducted the search.
Search and rescue volunteers used two dogs trained to find bodies, Pacheco said.
The search encompassed the entire area around the intersection, Pacheco said, but concentrated heavily on a large apartment complex being remodeled into condominiums about a block from the intersection on the north side of Golf Links.
The units are empty as the remodeling work is done, Pacheco noted.
The search, which started about 8 a.m., ended as darkness neared.
About 35 to 40 of the missing woman’s friends, family members and fellow church members helped pass out the fliers, Wes Read said.
Kay Read works as a medical records clerk at Palo Verde Mental Health Hospital, Seagle said.
Another sister, Jane Roberts, said Kay Read for the last 30 years taught Sunday school at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, 8051 E. Broadway.
She volunteered every summer to work with mentally challenged children at a summer camp.
As a child in Peoria, Ill., Roberts said, Read spent three years in a hospital confined to an iron lung, the result of polio contracted when she was 8 years old.
Read was reported missing by family members Friday.
She went to dinner at her mother’s house the night before, leaving about 10 p.m.
Read called her mother to say she had arrived home safely, a sister said.
When her mother called her Friday morning, Read did not answer the phone and Seagle went to Read’s home and found the door unlocked and Read gone.
Read is severely disabled by the childhood illness and needs a brace and crutches to walk, family members said.
Both were found in the home, Seagle said.
The area searched Tuesday is where Read’s missing turquoise 1996 Dodge Caravan was found Friday, police said.
Someone tried to set fire to the inside of the driver’s compartment, officers said.
A man was seen near the van and was seen at a gasoline station/convenience market, where he made a purchase and was caught on a surveillance camera.
He also was seen at a nearby bank trying to make a withdrawal using one of Read’s financial cards, Roberts said.
The market is on the southwest corner of Kolb and Golf Links, the bank is on the northeast corner and the partly burned van was in a shopping center parking lot on the northwest corner.
Pacheco described the area as the “epicenter” of the missing person case.
He said there was nothing else specifically pointing to that area and that no one reported seeing what could have been a body there.
Fliers such as this one at the home of missing woman Kay Read are being distributed throughout the neighborhood.
The missing woman
