The Deck - Ilene Misheloff (Ace of Hearts, California)

Episode Date: August 5, 2026

Our card this week is Ilene Misheloff, the Ace of Hearts from California.  Thirteen-year-old Ilene Misheloff normally walked the same path home from school most days. And on January 30, 1989, all signs indicate she took that same route… and ALMOST made it home. But something… or someone intervened. And somehow, with all the traffic and houses that lined her route, no one saw the moment that Ilene Misheloff disappeared.  In a case with so many leads and tips, investigators all these years later are left with one physical piece of evidence and a million questions… some of which they’re hoping you might be able to answer.   Anyone with information on the 1989 disappearance of Ilene Misheloff can call the Dublin Police Services tip line at 925-833-6638.   View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/ilene-misheloff Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media. Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuck Twitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuck Facebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllc To support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org. The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers.  Instagram: @ashleyflowers TikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkie Twitter: @Ash_Flowers Facebook: /AshleyFlowers.AF Text Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Our card this week is Eileen Misheloff, the Ace of Hearts from California. 13-year-old Eileen Misheloff normally walked the same path home from school most days, and on January 30th, 1989, all signs indicated that she took that same route and almost made it home, but something or someone intervened. And somehow, with all of the traffic and houses that lined her route, No one saw the moment that Eileen Mischeloff disappeared. In a case with so many leads and tips, investigators all these years later are left with one physical piece of evidence

and a million questions, some of which they're hoping you might be able to answer. I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is the deck. It's hard to overstate just how perfectly average doubling, California is in the late 1980s. This was a place where suburbia was synonymous with safety. Elementary school kids walked home from school, knew their neighbors, and played outside. High schoolers gabbed on the phone for hours, deciding what to wear to the dance, where they would inevitably jump around to Paula Abdul or slow dance to Phil Collins.

And 13-year-old Eileen Michalov fell right in that in-between stage. of becoming a young adult and still enjoying her childhood, alongside her friend, Liz Allen. We just got to play, and we got to have a great time together. And I remember during lunch recess, and we would all hang out and talk about life. A couple weeks earlier, it had been raining, and we had gone, we got into a water fight,

and we were, you know, stepping in the puddles and making each other soaking wet and had to go call the office so that we can get some new clothes and stuff like that. So we were just kids. And, you know, live in the kid life and having a good time with each other.

Liz met Eileen during their eighth grade year when they ended up in the same friend group. Eileen was the tall girl in the group. She had a close-knit family, a mom, Maddie, dad, Michael, a twin brother Brian and an older brother. Robert, and she was kind and a good student, all A's and B's. Liz and Eileen were in the same last period science exploration class,

where they did the most 1980s junior high thing, dissect frogs, though Liz had a different partner. I chose this partner for dissection, and she would take the whatever we were dissecting and make it alive and jump onto my desk. The frog jumped onto my desk. The heart was beating on my desk, and I was very squeamish. And so Eileen would tell me, next time, we'll be partners next time, and I won't do that to you. For as much time as Eileen gave her schoolwork, she gave her hobby even more.

She spent nearly all of her free time, up to 30 hours a week at Dublin, Iceland, where she was a competitive skater. These were the years of young Olympic hopefuls. And for as small as Dublin was at the time, just 24,000 residents, this was a good place to be for hopeful skaters. Brian Boytano and Christy Yamaguchi both actually skated at the same rink for a while. She was probably good enough to go to the Olympics, but we don't know because she was taken too soon. Eileen's normal schedule was a little different than her classmates. She would go to all her academic classes, like everyone else,

attend the same science class with Liz toward the end of the day. But instead of going to her final class in the last period of her day, which would have been P.E., she got to complete her physical education credit in another way. She was allowed to leave at 2.30 so that she could go to ice skating practice at 4 o'clock. Some days Eileen's mom would take her. But on Mondays and Thursdays, she would walk home or bus home from school and then her skating coaches, Michael and Peggy Tamries,

would pick her up and take her to practice at Dublin, Iceland for a 30-minute lesson. Then Eileen would free skate till her mom picked her up on the way home from work. January 30th, 1989, was a Monday. The whole day, friends who saw Eileen at Wells Middle School say that she was happy, normal. She wore a charcoal-gray pullover-esprey brand sweater, a pink and gray horizontally striped skirt and slip-on keds. And like every other day, she carried her blue backpack, her flute case, and a spuds-McKinsey key chain attached to the key that she used to let herself into her house.

I remember leaving science class and saying, bye, I'll see you tomorrow, and her walking away. Eileen took her normal route home that day. Detective Angelique Kilgore of Dublin Police Services has memorized that route backwards and forwards. So her route would be to walk down Penn Drive onto Amador Valley Boulevard, cross the street past the 680 overpass, to then get to San Ramon Road, go through the May Park entrance, and pass through the school back there, to then her house at Allegraint Drive. There was an AMPM convenience store just before the 680 overpass

that Eileen would sometimes stop at on her way home, like she did that day. A friend of her stated that she had seen her come out of the AMPM store, which is right off of AVB and Village Parkway. And she even recalled her having the money to buy like a snack from there because she had owed her money. So she had given her like $5 that she had owed her. So she was able to use that $5 to go then buy herself a snack and saw her walking out the AMPM.

Another person said she saw Eileen at Amador Valley near Village Parkway, just next to AMPM, also around 23. And then there was one final sighting of her at the center median strip of San Ramon and Amador Valley Boulevard, less than a mile from the AMPM and a little over a mile from her house. That was sometime between 250 and 310. When Eileen's older brother, Robert, got home from school that afternoon, Eileen wasn't home. Now, he didn't think much of it. Maybe she'd already been picked up by Michael or Peggy. But unbeknownst to him, that wasn't the case.

That day, it was supposed to be Michael that got Eileen. But the normally reliable coach hadn't been to the house at all. Police and family later say that was unlike him. So around 4.30 precisely, he notified Peggy, his wife, like, hey, I forgot to pick her up. So Peggy offers to go to Eileen's house to go pick her up. It's around 4.30 at this time. She goes to the house, robber answers the door, tells her she's not here, I haven't seen her. She hasn't come in at all.

According to police, Peggy didn't think much of it. She just went back to the rink. But when Maddie, Eileen's mom, showed up to the rink at around 6.10 p.m. to pick up her daughter and she wasn't there. She knew that there was a problem. That's when she notified the police and they came over. As night fell, the Dublin police dispatched nearly every, single one of their 27 officers to search for the missing teenager.

This was still years before Amber Alert, so in an effort to get the word out, all points bulletins were dispatched across the state, and they sent out a press release to local news stations. Eileen's face and details of her disappearance were running on local channels by the time the 11 o'clock news was on. That night, Eileen's parents took to the streets with their flashlights, screaming her name, sometimes running into police officers doing the same thing. Mike Mischeloff told reporters that he finally stopped when his batteries die.

Here's Brian Misheloff, Eileen's twin brother. You know, I think I slept some that night. It was the last night for quite a while that I really slept at all. The next morning, Eileen's friend Liz spotted a story in the paper reporting her friend's disappearance. And so I went and told my mom, and that was the first time I had ever heard her swear. So just because, you know, it was something it's every parent's worst nightmare, right? And here it was coming true. There's a reason everyone was so gripped by panic so quickly.

It wasn't just the fact that Eileen had no reason to take off, no boyfriend, no history of running away. It was because prior to this, there had been two other seemingly random San Francisco Bay area kidnappings. And so it was really scary because that's where kids get kidnapped. You know, in my mind, I knew the gravity of it because, oh my gosh, this is my worst fear for myself. Liz took the newspaper article with her on the bus and into school. Word was spreading fast and only picked up steam when police showed up to talk to students

and search Eileen's locker. We've been through some of her binders. They pretty much gave her an assignment in English class. where they asked her, well, did you, what can you tell us about a time where it was not traumatic, but like you had a hard time dealing with something. And they wrote it as like a thing of the most difficult situation that you've been in. And hers was disappointing her mom. Something so innocent.

I literally cried reading it. I was like, oh my God, this is so sad. Like she's just so innocent, like in what she wrote. Like, it was just so pure. The binders and the random items in her locker didn't reveal anything helpful that might suggest where Eileen could be, which only reinforced the idea that she had not left on her own. Every hour that passed brought with it more urgency, more people to help, not just with the search for Eileen, but to offer support to her family in any way that they could.

Here's Eileen's twin Brian again. There is, you know, newspaper people, TV, people, God knows how many people came to the house every day bringing food. A lot of them people we didn't know. I remember barely having slept, going to go downstairs, and all these eyes on me. And just feeling like I wanted to crawl in a hole. And that was like every day. With a major highway just feet from Eileen's route home, every year, hour that went by meant that Eileen could be getting farther and farther away, possibly even

taken over state lines, which is why, by Thursday, the FBI was brought in to assist in the investigation. And friends of friends got strategic about where they were sending some of these 70,000 printed flyers they'd made. We would send out mass amounts of flyers and stuff, and they started off. I remember one time they did orthodontists. And so they just did all orthodontists because she had braces. And so if they wanted to get the braces off, you know, that sort of thing. And on Friday, the department utilized another tool in their arsenal. Chris Hendel was a detective sergeant with Dublin police when he started looking at this case. Now he's a lieutenant. What better tool to use than something that can track a human scent?

Police took three tracking dogs to three different starting points along Eileen's path. They always make sure they can't see each other and they work on their own sense. So independent of each other because they don't want, if they see the other dogs doing quote unquote good or gets praised, then they'll copy that because they'll be like, oh, I'll get a treat that way, right? One dog followed Eileen's route until it strayed and came to a complete stop. One made it to A.m. and the third stopped 50 yards west of the 680 overpass on what would have been Eileen's path home. And that last one is extra interesting to me because where the dog stopped was at an apartment complex. They looked in the dumpster, didn't find anything.

Lieutenant Chris Hendel, who works this case with Detective Kilgore, said it's hard to tell, if the dogs were working off an old or new scent, since this was such a well-trodden path by Eileen. That's really hard to tell, but I'm going to say that those dogs don't know Eileen. Like, they know the scent, so they're going to stay on the scent. And I think that they just followed their nose

to where that scent took them. Lieutenant Hendel and Detective Kilgore confirmed there were search warrants executed that first week, but they won't name names or say. if any of them were for the apartment complex that the dogs led them to. Here's the thing, though. I love me a working dog. Don't get me wrong.

But there is a chance none of the dogs picked up her trail from that day. Because the same day that those dogs were utilized, an important clue was found on Eileen's path home that the dogs missed. Four days after Eileen went missing, a deputy on patrol was out near Eileen's route, San Ramon Road in a parking lot behind what is now MAPE Memorial Park. He just went to go do some follow-up at MAPE Park and parked his patrol car over there and came upon a keychain and was like, I think I remember hearing about this keychain.

So he ends up calling the detective on it and they confirmed like, yeah, it's a Spes-McKenzie key chain with a single key on it. So he left it there, waited for an evidence tech to come out. Now, if you don't remember Spuds, he is distinctive. The popular black and white bull terrier mascot was seen in ads for Bud Light back then. And if there was any wonder whether this was Eileen's keychain or someone else's who also liked the popular pooch, it didn't take much to put an end to that question. The key that hung from the chain opened the Mishelov's front door.

Obviously, we know the day prior she used those keys to get in her house. So those keys were within her possession, you know, at some point throughout the day. The park was the one area along Eileen's route home that provided the most privacy. It's not huge, but it's blocked on two sides by trees. Perhaps someone was lying in wait for Eileen, a predator. But the question was, was it the same predator who was responsible for the other girls who had gone missing in the months prior? In June of 1988, seven months before Eileen's disappearance, in Penel, California, seven-year-old Amber Schwartz-Garcia was jumping rope in her front yard when she disappeared.

The next morning, Amber's pink socks were discovered in a park near her home, according to Doe Network. These socks were a dropped piece of evidence, just like Eileen's keys. Then in November of 88, a nine-year-old named Michaela Garrett disappeared too, in Hayfield. were in front of a grocery store. They were riding on scooters. People saw it happen. It was in daylight. People saw it happen.

They knew. And somebody had followed them. There was an older woman who followed the car at the time and memorized the license plate, but was too scared to get involved. And so by the time she did call it in, she had forgotten everything. I know the biggest one that everyone alluded to was the Michaela Gary. case. Everyone compared it to that one because it was just a year prior. And it was so close. It was within a 15, 20 minute drive of Dublin. So I think people automatically went back to that case specifically.

These kidnappings were so pervasive. There was an A1 story in the San Francisco Examiner in November 1988 before Eileen ever went missing about the spate of missing kids. The article said, quote, One grisly fact illustrated by many recent Bay Area cases is the extent to which child mapping has changed from a crime of money to a crime of perversion. There was even a sidebar called How to Help Keep Your Children Safe. It told parents to fingerprint their kids and implement a buddy system. I think everyone was just like, that's not going to happen here. We're not going to let that happen. I think their mindset.

But it did. And the producers of America's Most Wanted seem to agree this was a big issue when they ran a piece on the three Bay Area missing girls, Amber, Michaela, and Eileen. It was just so strange, but it was all right in the same time period within a few months. And Eileen was the last one of those three girls, I believe. And, you know, there's always that old adage of things happen in threes, right? Even if the kidnappings weren't at all related, detectives across departments could at least compare notes. Hey, you had this abduction.

Tell me about that. And then, you know, sending somebody out to see if there's any similarities, you know, inquiring assistance from, you know, the FBI with trying to match personalities to certain crimes that they were investigating. You know, who could be our person of interest here? working those leads. This is like an all-hands-on deck, you know. And not only you have tips coming in from the public,

you have different tips coming in from different agencies. Hey, check out this guy. Hey, check out this guy. Hey, check out this guy. All those guys they checked out resulted in nothing. At least not for Eileen's case. But both Ambers and Michaela's would see resolution. Ambers in 2007, when a man named

Curtis Dean Anderson gave a deathbed confession. He'd already been serving time for the abduction and sexual assault of an eight-year-old and the kidnapping, molestation, and murder of a seven-year-old named Ziana Fairchild. Anderson confessed in prison that he kidnapped Amber, drove to Arizona, killed her, and left her in the desert. Then in 2020, prosecutors finally charged a man named David Meish with the murder of Michaela Garrett. fingerprints pulled from the handlebars of Michaela's scooter matched his. We actually did an episode of that on crime junkie called Captured Bay Area Predator.

By 2020, Meach was already in prison serving a life sentence for murder for killing a 36-year-old woman back in 1989. And then, in 2025, he was sentenced to 50 years for two more killings that he was linked to. Mish is still incarcerated at a jail in Dublin, California. no less. But he has not yet been convicted for Michaela's abduction and murder. That only leaves Eileen. When I slept, I'd have nightmares every night until I just stopped remembering my dreams.

And I don't know how long that took. I felt like I had nothing. She was the person I was closest to. You know, there's a bond between twins. The family celebrated Eileen's March 12th birthday. birthday two and a half months later by putting a cake in the freezer for the day that they hoped she would come back home. They bought gifts for her, wrapped on the dining room table. The Mishelaw family never took a vacation together again after January 1989.

Because if Eileen happened to come home, they wanted someone there to greet her, just in case. The police had put in a tape recorder and had my parents get a second line. But leads grew thin and the case grew cold. In 2009, when the public first got wind of Amber's case being closed with that 2007 deathbed confession, another huge event took over the headlines that gave those who loved Eileen hope. When J.C. Dugard was found, that's what brought hope back again. you know, that she possibly could be alive and maybe, you know, though it was a house of horrors that she was kept in, it's at least she was able to come home and be returned to her family.

In 2009, Eileen's grandfather, Maddie's dad was dying. The whole family went out to be with him on the East Coast, and Liz offered to watch. the house. One of the first things that the Mischlofs did when Eileen went missing was they kept the phone number that she knew and they got a new line for people to use. And so we would call them on this new line and the old line was specifically for Eileen to use because that's the phone number that she knew. And so, I mean, this was, you know, almost 20 years later. Liz was alone in the house at night when that phone started ringing and ringing. And she had been in the house before, hanging out with Eileen's twin brother Brian, but she had never heard that phone ring.

And so now here I am by myself in this house and that phone is ringing. And so I thought that it was that they found her because they were digging up the yard where J.C. Dugard was kept and everything, and so I thought that they found her or maybe her clothing or something. J.C. Dugard, who'd been kidnapped in South Lake Tahoe in 1991, two years after Eileen went missing, had been found alive. She had been living in captivity for 18 years. For the briefest moment, Liz couldn't help but have a small bit of hope that maybe Eileen was there too. This phone keeps going off and keeps going off, and it was freaking me out. I had to leave the house because it was so scary to me.

It was so sad to me that all these years, they wouldn't leave the house together. They wouldn't leave town together. And this is the first time they did. And she's found. That was what kept running through my head. It wasn't the police or the FBI calling with news. It was news reporters looking for comment. Every time one of these mysteries gets solved, detectives kill Gore and Hendell can't help but feel something.

Then they rein themselves in, careful not to get too low or too high. Like obviously we're human. We get excited about new leads and especially me, Lieutenant here, we dork out on it and we'll be like, maybe it's this guy, maybe it's this guy. But then we have to take that out of it because we're fact finders. Ultimately, Eileen wasn't with Jacey. But Lieutenant Hendel said that doesn't mean that she's not alive somewhere. You have other cases where they were, you know, transported in a van or a car for a great length of time and, you know, held captive somewhere else or, you know, unfortunately sexually assaulted and murdered, you know,

within, you know, an hour of being abducted. You just don't know. We don't have anything to tie in what exactly happened. Or for all we know, she could still be alive today. But we have no proof to say otherwise. For years, investigators have run down every single lead that's come their way. Some, as recently as 2025, when they got a tip from an East Bay woman who said that she remembered something weird in her neighborhood from back in 1989.

It was the sound of chains rattling and a young girl's voice yelling something that sounded like health. I don't know what jogged the tipster's memory or why she came forward to Dublin police in 2025, but that memory she had of hearing chains and a girl yelling made her think that it could have been Eileen. So Detective Kilgore and Lieutenant Hendel took their memory. measured approach and worked the lead. It's a lot more than just saying,

I think there was a body in that backyard. Yeah. Let's go get some shovels. Right. Like, there's so many more steps that you have to take. So we got the FBI to help us out, and we were able to get human remains detection dogs out onto the property. And that's where I am just infatuated by these dogs.

They're amazing what they can do. They brought two dogs out. One alerted to assent. But then again, it's an old property. It's been 30-something years. So it could have been human remains from like a very long time ago, from a different location that over time it's moved down to where we were looking at. So going based on that, that gave us a little more probable cause to believe that there's something there.

So we ended up writing search warrants and, um, The property owner had nothing to do with it. They had bought the house over time. But a lot of the statements that were given, plus the dog, we ended up doing a GPR, ground penetrating radar. But that didn't indicate any abnormalities. The promising tip became a dead end. In all of these years, they've only ever collected a single piece of physical evidence

that they know conclusively can be left. linked to Eileen. That's Spud's McKenzie keychain. There's conflicting information out there that there was a backpack located. We have never found a backpack. We have a keychain. Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of evidence to go off of other than a keychain. They, of course, tried doing some testing on the keychain back in 89, tried lifting prints, but it didn't yield anything. But I keep wondering, what if the keychain is the unlock? Maybe not in terms of physical evidence,

but in the story that it tells. Because there's something about where it was found and when that really bothers me. What if Eileen wasn't the one who dropped her keychain in the park? Do I believe the keys were a red herring? It's hard to say. Think about all the people who took and retook Eileen's path from school to home, home to school, and back,

looking for her or any sign of her over the four days that preceded this find. Eileen's older brother, Robert, led police on the path himself. They checked everything along the way, drainage systems, creeks included. It seems impossible that they would have missed this, unless, of course, it hadn't been there the whole time. There's also those sadistic people out there who commit these crimes and then revisit these, you know, locations where they were abducted and set a piece of evidence to deed to the path of detectives. Detour them away from what, where, who.

If this was a plant, it really changes the way I think about the perpetrator in this case. Because a random abductor wouldn't know Eileen's normal route home. It also means this isn't someone who grabbed her and then got the hell out of Dodge. It would be someone who was still around Dublin, days after Eileen went missing. Police wouldn't tell us exactly who in the family's circle they spoke to and when, but they said that they looked closely at everyone who would have been in Eileen's orbit, even her family. In cases like these were whodunit, you have to suspect everybody. almost in a way.

And it was hard, like, reading some of them because you have to talk to mom, dad, who are super loving parents. And you have to ask them, like, very uncomfortable questions, right? And it was the same for the coaches. Eileen's family said it was super unlike her coaches to forget to pick her up.

How is it that on this one day they forget she goes missing? Also, why did they pick her up at all? Like, any day. Her walk home took her, right by the ice ring, why not just go straight there? I mean, even if she didn't want to wait around until her four o'clock lesson, why not go home and then walk back herself?

I had so many questions I thought were going to go unanswered because Michael Tamry's passed away in 2018, and we were having trouble reaching Peggy, who divorced from Michael in the early 2000s. But after a month of reporting, and at the 11th hour, Peggy called us, and she had some pretty simple answers to our questions. Starting with, why didn't Eileen just go to the ring from school?

Well, she said Eileen probably needed to go home first to grab her skating gear. Now, if she had to drag her skates with her, then she wouldn't be walking. And if she had a skating dress on, I wouldn't want to be walking. When asked about the timeline that day, Peggy told our reporter what she told police. She and Michael were at home earlier that day. They had plans to go out of town that night, first to Berkeley, California, about 30 minutes away for a dance thing related to skating, and then on a ski trip near Lake Tahoe for three or four days. So they packed bags and left for the ice rink together in one car. According to Peggy, they were both coaching, but they taught separate kids that day.

And she remembered how Michael asked her to go retrieve Eileen at home. He was supposed to go pick her up and he got involved in something and said, will you go pick her up? Okay, fine. Because I didn't have another lesson until for whatever the session was. Our reporter Kate Michigan asked Peggy if she went to look for Eileen at all

once she realized she was missing. And she said no. She stayed at her lesson, but Michael went for a little bit and then they decided to stick with their plans and head out of town. Well, I had been, kind of a unique situation because we went on the ski trip right after we got home,

I was starting my third and final attempt at in vitro fertilization. That was like back in the day when the success rate wasn't all that good. And I was at advanced age. So we continued with that trip for that reason. and I have a 36-year-old daughter because of it. The detectives followed up with them, I believe, the following day. Gave him a call and gave them a statement over the phone. They were like, oh, yeah, when we get back, we're more than happening to meet with you guys.

So they did several follow-up interviews with them after in person at the skating rink, at their house. Like, confirmed all that stuff. And they were very forthcoming, very helpful. Peggy told our reporter that the FBI shows up every 10 years or so to ask about Eileen. Same questions, just in case it unlocks something new. But based on some tense moments with our reporter Kate, I think she's tired of answering the same questions. Can you tell me what you remember about that day itself?

That might help me kind of lead up. Oh, my God. We already went through this. Peggy said she doesn't know if the FBI followed up with her husband, but she doesn't think so. As far as she knows, they weren't suspects, and she even offered to take a polygraph, but she said that she was told it wasn't necessary. But even if they weren't suspects, people in town did assign blame to them over the years,

including the Michalov family. Did they ever talk to you about that? Did they ever bring it up with you directly? No. The Michelof family? Well, if we didn't see them, I went over to the house once with a girlfriend to see if there's anything we could do. and there was really no communication. What do you mean?

We were quiet. We made our, like, I'm really sorry. Is there anything we can do? And we left. And that was the only time. Was it Maddie that was coming from or for her husband? What was coming from? They didn't talk to us.

Oh, okay. But you saw everyone and no one talked to you? Basically, yeah. Wow. What were you hoping to do that day? I was hoping to basically commiserate with everybody and say how sorry I was

that they were going through it and hopeful that they would have some news and find her. And they went and talk to you? Nope. Wow. Did they talk to your ex-husband? I don't know. I never went over there with him. Okay. Did he go by and thought?

I don't know. It would be odd to me if authorities honed in on Peggy alone and not Michael. Peggy didn't want to talk much about him. She wanted to keep the questions to Eileen. And there isn't much about Michael online to fill in the gaps. There are a few articles about him as a skating coach. Michael seemed to work a lot with young kids. In one 1997 article, he spoke of a 10-year-old boy and girl that he was coaching,

saying they were 10 going on 20. And of the girl Ashley, he said she, quote, as looks, poise, and sells well. Usually at 10, girls are awkward, but she has the ability to present herself and her team, and that is the ladies' job. Our reporter Kate talked to a few people who knew Michael in Colorado where he later moved.

All they would say is that Michael was really well-liked and was involved in the local skating community, but they didn't want to be interviewed. Though the other thing that they added was that they didn't recall Michael ever talking specifically, about Eileen or whether the tragedy influenced his coaching philosophy. But Peggy said that losing Eileen impacted her psyche. Detectives Kilgore and Hendell do not consider anyone in the Tamry's family a suspect.

They don't have any suspects right now. Though there were some that cropped up over the years, like the Speed Freak killers, two California men linked to a spate of killings while they were on meth. And James DeVeggio and Michelle Meshon, who kidnapped and killed young women in Northern California. Or Timothy Binder. He was actually considered a suspect in some of the other missing persons cases that I hit on earlier in this episode. But according to Kilgore and Hendel, it's unlikely that any of them had anything to do with Eileen's disappearance. We need the public's help to assist us with this case because we don't have a lot in it.

We've been talking about it. We'd have a keychain and maybe a handful of things. That and hopefully technology. But the public is a huge one. I am an advocate for people giving in tips and if there's something that they've been holding on for years that they want to just get off their chest, now's the time.

Angie and I can both say that we talk multiple times a day about it. You know, sometimes I spend my wish. wheels at night, looking at the ceiling, thinking about the what-ifs on this case, and the next steps. And so it is personal a little bit. You know, we both want to solve this case. We're both highly motivated. Every single year, the Mishelof family kept a ritual.

On January 30th, they walk Eileen's path from Wells Middle School, down Amador Valley Boulevard, past the AMPM over the 680 overpass through Mayport. Memorial Park, back to Eileen's home. Everyone would crowd into the Mishelof's house to watch the 10 o'clock news to see coverage of the walk. They would stay so that the Mishelof didn't have to be alone. In April 2020, Eileen's mom, Maddie Misheloff, passed away. Eileen's dad, Michael Misheloff, followed in 2024. Brian Misheloff told us that he and his brother barely saved anything when they sold the family house.

People always assume that the worst thing is not knowing. And that wasn't it. It's that, you know, the worst thing, at least for me, was that whatever she went through is far worse than what I've gone through. You know, of course, I want to know, but it's not something I think about on a day-to-day basis. And I think about her every day, but I think about her. Liz still thinks about her friend regularly as well,

still talks to her too. I would always talk to her parents and say, I'm not her best friend. I'm a great friend because our other best friend, they had those best friend necklaces, and so they were best friends, but I'm a great friend, and I will always be here.

The Mishelah family doesn't do those walks anymore, but this year, Liz took her son. And so we walked her route home, and I got, you know, there are creeks along the way, and I look in those creeks for Eileen every time. Even though it's been almost 40 years, I still am looking for her. What are you hoping to find?

That's a really, really hard question to answer. Because if it's her and she's alive, then that means that she's been hurting for almost 40 years. Because if it was, if she ran away, then there's a big reason that she ran away and that hurt for all these years to be gone. And so we definitely don't think that. And so if somebody took her away,

from us, then, and if she's still alive, then what were they doing to her all of these years? And if she's not alive, I mean, we want her to be alive for her family, right? And so it's such a hard question to answer because I want her to be alive, but I also want her to be alive 37 years ago. I mean, that's what I've spent so many years wondering, is if I had a time machine, what I could do? Or if I could stop time, I could go back and I can, you know, grab her out of the evil clutches of whoever took her.

Or I've spent a lot of time in my life wishing for things to be different so that that didn't happen to my friend. And that didn't happen to her family. Anyone with information on the 1989 disappearance of Eileen Mischelaw can call the Dublin Police Services tip line at 925-833-6638. The Deck is an audio chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about the Deck and our advocacy work, visit the Deckpodcast.com. I think Chuck would approve.

No.