About a month after the first one in Los Angeles Alice Mary Jurikiewicz was whisked away one day while walking home from school. She was a grade ahead of me so I didn't know her very well.

For a while they chose to believe it was an abduction. I heard that every family wanted to believe this over the alternative. Except the Catholics, whose explanation was that it was the Almighty taking saints up into heaven. I suppose it would be a happier thought to think your child went to heaven rather than up and up into the atmosphere until their head exploded.