The Disappearance of Tara Calico

Tara Leigh Calico was born on February 28, 1969 in Belen, New Mexico to Patty Doel.  

She was willfully pursuing her dreams and mature beyond her years after recovering from a car wreck in high school.

She wasn't going to let anyone stand in her way.

She was a 19-year-old college sophomore, studying psychology at the University of New Mexico-Valencia Campus in 1988. On Tuesday, September 20th, it was after 9 in the morning and she was headed out for a ride on her mothers pink huffy bike. She was heading out from her family’s house in Rio Communities, New Mexico with her Walkman cassette player and a Boston tape.

The route she supposedly took along, New Mexico State Road 47, was roughly 35 miles and one she frequented almost every morning, sometimes with her mother Patty.

Patty had recently stopped riding with Tara, because she felt like she was being stalked by a motorist.

Patty advised her daughter to carry mace, but Tara rejected the idea.

Tara planned on being back in time to meet her boyfriend for tennis around noon.

A few days earlier she had taken a bike ride and had a flat tire, this was her first ride since.

Tara told her mom 

"If I’m not back by noon, come look for me."

Her family never heard from her ever again.

Hours passed.  It was around noon and Patty was worried because Tara wasn't home yet. Concerned that she was stranded on the side of the road, Patty headed out in search of Tara. Patty searched the route her daughter usually took, and when she couldn't find Tara, Patty called the police. 

Tara didn’t make her tennis match or her afternoon classes. She was gone, nowhere to be found, as if she had vanished into thin air.

The bike tracks going off the pavement, pieces of Tara's Walkman and a cassette tape were all later discovered one to three miles south of where Tara was last seen riding north toward her home close to a secluded campground. Patty believed that Tara might have dropped the pieces in an attempt to mark her trail.

Several people claimed to have seen Tara riding her bicycle. No one has come forward saying that they witnessed her abduction, but several witnesses observed a light-colored pickup truck, possibly a 1953 Ford with a camper shell, following closely behind her. 

All of the witnesses told police they saw her wearing earphones and appeared unaware of anyone behind her.

Investigators learned that in the months before she went missing, “threatening notes” were left on her vehicle.

Months went by with no new leads. Then on June 15, 1989, on a hot summer day, in Port St. Joe, Florida, a lady shopping at a local grocery store spotted a Polaroid picture lying in the parking lot. Curious she picked it up. 

In the photo, there was a teen girl and a young boy, staring at the camera with their hands tied behind their backs and duct tape covering their mouths. They’re both lying on a bed, which appears to be in the back of a van or bus.

A white, windowless, Toyota cargo van had been parked in the area where the picture was found, but the driver was never located. He’s described as a white male with a mustache, who appeared to be in his 30s.

Patty was convinced the girl in the photo was her daughter. The hair, eyes, and skin complexion matched, and the girl in the photo had a skin discoloration on her right leg in the exact spot that Tara had a scar. There was a copy of the V.C. Andrew’s book My Sweet Audrina lying on the bed next to the girl. Andrews was Tara’s favorite author.

Scotland Yard analyzed the photo and concluded that the woman was Tara, but a second analysis by the Los Alamos National Laboratory disagreed. An FBI analysis of the photo was inconclusive.

According to Joel Nugent, the Gulf County sheriff who worked the Florida case, both kids appeared to be terrified.

“It obviously is two kids with terror written all over them. It’s kind of a bad time when you have to look at something like that…. No one knows for sure if it [the picture] was a set up. Some people think it was a staged photograph, but it was a real look of fear to me.”

Another Polaroid was found near a construction site in Montecito, California, and is a blurry photo of a girl's face with tape covering her mouth, and light blue striped fabric behind her, similar to that on the pillow in the Toyota van photo. It was taken on film that was not available until June 1989.

In the days, weeks, months and years after Tara’s disappearance, Patty worked tirelessly searching for her missing daughter.

She never gave up hope, even until the day she died in May 2006. Patty succumbed to complications from a series of strokes.

Former Valencia County Sheriff Rene Rivera had been following the case since 1989. In 2008, he claimed he knew what happened to Tara. He said he’d been told a truck had accidentally hit Tara. Rivera believed local boys were in the truck and that they had help hiding her body and concealing the truth. He said it was hard to make a case stick without a body.

A multi-agency task force examined Tara's disappearance in 2013 and 2014. 

Both the FBI and the Valencia County Sheriff’s Office are probing at least two living local suspects, though they decline to discuss their probable theories or the suspects’ names.

No arrests have been made and the case remains open.

When she was last seen, Tara was 5'7 tall, 120 pounds, with brown hair and green eyes.She was wearing an orange sweater, a white t-shirt with '1st National Bank of Belen' on it (size medium), white shorts with green stripes, white ankle socks, and white and turquoise Avia tennis shoes. She was also wearing a gold butterfly ring with a diamond insert, a gold amethyst ring, and half-inch gold hoop earrings.

Tara has a large scar on the back of her right shoulder and a scar on her calf. She has a dime-sized brown birthmark on the back of one of her legs. She has a lazy eye and has a cowlick on her right temple. She has previously had braces on her teeth, and her ears are pierced.