Member-only story
The Disappearance of a Child
The story of Corrine Erstad
I still remember that day. It was June 2, 1992, and I had barely walked into the door of our school when our secretary asked me if I heard about the girl who was missing. I told her I hadn’t.
She explained to me that a five-year-old girl was missing in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota, the suburb that borders the town where I taught. The last place she was seen was in a park not far from our school. I didn’t give it a lot of thought at the time because kids come up missing all the time, only to be later found at a friend’s house or with a relative.
Her name was Corrine Erstad.
In the days to come, she had still not been found, and the story made the local news. I read that she had left her home to play in the park near her home, and that she never returned. Pictures and physical descriptions of her were placed all over the state. Corrine was around three feet tall, had brown hair and brown eyes, and was wearing a white sundress with a green and pink pattern on it.
Her brothers had been sent to the park to look for her after she had been gone for only five minutes, but when they got to the park, there was no sign of Corrine. Later that evening, her parents reported her missing.
