In May 1968, Issaquah was a small town where bad things really didn’t happen to people. So, when 8-year-old David Adams disappeared, people turned out from all over the area to help look for him. Surely he must have just gotten lost on the mountain on his way home from a friend’s house. Surely he would be found. But he wasn’t. And as days turned into weeks, months, years and decades, the story of the blue-eyed boy turned into memories for those who knew him and was of little meaning to those who didn’t. The Issaquah Press did an occasional story about him in the early years, but later on, David Adams was all but forgotten. In summer 2006, reporter Bob Taylor tried to update the story, but records were gone or nearly impossible to find. People’s memories were fading, if those people could be found in the first place. In fall 2009, reporter Warren Kagarise took a new run at the story. He spent countless hours locating all newspaper accounts that could be found from the time of little David’s disappearance. And he began trying to contact people from that time, starting with David’s parents, whom The Press had stayed in contact with over the years. Kagarise talked to detectives who have taken on the cold case in hopes of solving it. He found classmates of David’s and interviewed them. He talked at length with David’s parents, and other family and friends. He talked to the last person to see David before his disappearance, a man who was a child then whose story brought tears to readers’ eyes. Kagarise talked to anyone he could locate who had any memory of the case at all. In all, he found more than a dozen people from that time and interviewed them. And he found that things didn’t get reported in the early days of the search turned investigation and, worse yet, things had been reported inaccurately. Then, in writing a three-part series about the boy lost on a mountainside four decades ago, Kagarise brought David to life for readers; explained how the search was done then and how it would be done much differently today; and corrected inaccurate information that The Press and other news organizations reported wrong in the first place and continued to re-report. Most importantly, Kagarise taught people that this newspaper cares about its readers and all of the city’s residents, no matter how long ago something happened to them. And he reminded readers that young David Adams needs to be brought home, and that he won’t be forgotten until the case of his disappearance is closed.
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