How Romney Leadership Rescued a Missing Girl
By Barnaby Conrad
Ask heroes why they step in to save another life
and they’ll say, “Anyone else would have done the
same thing.”
As devoted parents of five rambunctious boys,
Mitt and Ann Romney knew a thing or two about
parenting headstrong children. But in July of 1996,
Mitt faced a unique challenge when Robert Gay, a
partner at Bain Capital, called him in Boston and said
in a worried voice, “Mitt, my daughter’s been missing
for three days.”
Fourteen-year-old Melissa (“Missy”) Gay had left
her family’s home in Ridgefield, Connecticut on Saturday,
July 6th to play tennis at her family’s club and
simply disappeared. All Bob and Lynnette Gay knew
was what another teenager had admitted—that
Missy had secretly taken a train to New York to attend
an all-night concert at Downing Stadium on Randall’s
Island. She was last seen at 11 a.m. Sunday morning
in a park under the Whitestone Bridge.
“We’re Going to Find Her”
Nobody knew where she was. Romney asked a
few quick questions, then made an extraordinary decision.
“Let’s close the firm, let’s close the company.
Let’s all of us fly down to New York and try to find her.”
Bob Gay remembered Mitt saying,” I don’t care how
long it takes. We’re going to find her.”
All 30 Bain partners and 20 employees caught
the shuttle to New York where they turned a Marriott
hotel into a command center complete with toll free
numbers to field phone tips. “We met with detectives
from the New York City Police Department, “ Romney
recalls, “and we hired a private investigative firm to
help guide us through the process.”
Mitt called clients that Bain had worked with and
asked for help: R.R. Donnelly, the firm’s printer,
cranked out 300,000 fliers bearing Missy’s photo and
last known whereabouts. Accountants at Price Waterhouse
Cooper plastered Manhattan’s street poles
with “missing” posters. Duane Reade, a drugstore
chain in which Bain Capital was an investor, asked
clerks in 52 stores to stuff fliers in shopping bags.
Romney and his colleagues hit the streets. They
tramped up and down Manhattan, buttonholing anyone
who might have seen the missing five foot-three
inch, 103-pound girl.
“I just hope that somebody could find it in their
heart to call and let us know where she is,” said
Lynette Gay, then 44, while speaking to New York
Daily News about her missing daughter. The police
grimly advised that the longer it takes to track down
a missing person, the slimmer the chances she would
be found…alive.
No one knew if Missy had been kidnapped or
killed, but Romney and the Bain team never gave up.
They persuaded 200 volunteers to hand out thousands
of flyers from Times Square to late-night clubs.
The extraordinary effort by a bunch of straight-arrow
bankers in suits with briefcases inspired 3 television
news stations to broadcast Missy’s story.
A Secret Guest
Five days after her disappearance, a teenage boy
called a tip line, inquired about a reward, then hung
up abruptly. The NYPD traced the call to Montville,
New Jersey, where the police located Missy at the
home of a 17-year-old boy whose flabbergasted parents
didn’t even know she’d been a “secret guest” in
their house for days. Bob and Lynette Gay rushed to
New Jersey and found the girl pale and shaken, but
unharmed.
Today, sixteen years later, she is a fourth grade
teacher and happily married with children. Both she
and her husband contributed to Romney’s 2008 presidential
bid.
What does this story say about Mitt Romney’s
character? He didn’t do it for for self-aggrandizement
or for personal gain. As Ann Romney has said of her
husband, “Mitt doesn’t view helping others as a duty.
He sees it as a privilege.”
And:
Romney to
the Rescue
The Obama campaign laughed at
photos of the jet skiing Romneys.
But not the six members of New
Jersey’s Morrisey
family who cried for
help when their boat
began to sink in
the early evening
dark. Romney and
two of his sons
jumped on their jet
skis and followed
their cries, according
to the Boston Herald.
The Romneys
rescued the family,
and also McKenzie,
their Scottish Terrier.
With the entire freaking US military and the CIA at his command, he couldn't - wouldn't - save the lives of his own ambassador and the men who tried to rescue him.
Yes, these two incidents I listed were gathered from a paid political ad, but they remain true, nonetheless. You'll never read it in the mainstream media, so be thankful you were able to read about it at all.
