She was the new girl, the public school girl, starting at St. Mary’s as a fifth-grader.
And she wasn’t even Catholic.
“I didn’t know when to kneel, when to stand, I had no idea what they were doing,” says Sarah Einspahr, 38 now, a nurse and mother of three.
But a classmate helped her figure it out. A quiet girl with a round face and a big smile, brown hair cut in a bob. A girl named Candi Harms.
Sarah found her place at the small downtown school with Candi and a whole group of girls with names from 1970s baby books. Casey and Sonja and Karla and Koree and Adrian.
They rode the bus home, hung out at each other’s houses, stayed up too late at slumber parties, giggled on the phone, passed notes in the hall when they all arrived at Pius X High School four years later.
People are also reading…
Candi was the straight arrow. The girl who was never catty, never mean. The girl who kept everyone in line.
“She was safe before the rest of us were even smart enough to be safe,” Sarah says.
It’s been 20 years since that girl was abducted, raped and murdered by two men posing as police officers. Her body was found two months later in a field outside of town.
Her circle of friends has scattered. They have married and mothered, kept in touch and lost track.
A story in the newspaper last week brought everything back. The crime and the fear, the friend they mourned and still miss.
Casey Ketterer was working the take-out counter at Valentino’s in the fall of 1992. She had been a St. Mary’s and Pius girl -- part of the circle -- but after graduation she and Candi became closer.
They had a class together at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, bought football tickets and went to those first few games, and then to Candi’s new boyfriend’s to celebrate afterward.
“She was coming out of her shell,” Casey says. “She was really having fun.”
After Candi disappeared, Casey wore a button with her friend's face on it to remind customers to look for her. She posted fliers.
Her worried mom bought her a cellphone.
Now Casey is a mom, her three boys clamoring for her attention as she talks.
Like Candi's other friends -- and strangers compelled to help -- Sarah papered the city with fliers, too.
She bought Mace. She had someone walk her to her car when she got off work late at Amigo’s.
Candi had gone into the fast-food restaurant on O Street a few weeks before she disappeared. The two got caught up. She told Sarah about her boyfriend, Todd. She was happy.
Sarah had a little boy by then, born the summer before their senior year at Pius.
“Some people judged me, but Candi wasn’t one of them. She never wavered in her support of me.”
She helped with the baby shower, even brought her mom along.
A few weeks before Brad was born, Sarah and Candi went to a movie and ran into a boy from class.
“He looked like he was horrified. ... We laughed so hard.”
Brad is 21 and in the Army now. Evan, the youngest, is 7. Her only daughter, Breanne, is 16.
She drives them places other kids walk. She panics when they are late coming home.
Last week, Breanne went to a friend’s house and didn’t let her mom know.
“She said, ‘What’s the big deal?’ And I told her, ‘You just don’t understand, three hours can mean everything.’”
Sarah and her husband moved to Grand Island in 1994. She didn’t make it back to her high school reunion this summer -- 20 years already? -- but she keeps in touch.
“I know that they did remember Candi at the Mass, and they raised money and part of the proceeds were put toward a scholarship in her name.”
It was a small class, she says. People haven’t forgotten.
When she thinks of the girl who sat beside her those first mornings at St. Mary’s, letting her know when to kneel, when to stand, how to pray, she doesn’t think about what Candi missed as the rest of them left those days behind.
She's in a better place, Sarah says. A good place.
“You miss a friendship. I hurt more for her family. That, I can’t even fathom.”