By Eliza Ridgeway

Community volunteers and police organize at Oak school in efforts to find the missing girl last week. joe hu/town crier

The Los Altos community experienced the extremes of fear and relief Nov. 1 as a daylong search for missing 11-year-old Tara Kapany ended with her safe return.

Los Altos residents Erica and Raj Kapany awoke the morning after Halloween to find their daughter, Tara, along with her sleeping bag and her trick-or-treat candy, missing. The Oak Avenue Elementary School sixth-grader was found unharmed in the early evening, in a bed of ivy near the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints on Grant Road, blocks from her home.

When the Kapanys reported their daughter missing, the Los Altos Police Department and Oak Avenue Elementary School staff and parents quickly mobilized a search. Police worked on the assumption that Tara had left home of her own will but did not discount an abduction.

After a day of fruitless searching by police and members of the community, more than 100 people gathered at Oak school with the Kapanys and the police to plan the next steps. The police continued the formal search while the citizen volunteers organized a night search. During the meeting, Sgt. Matt Hartley responded to a radio call.

“It was a dramatic moment,” said Oak Principal Dave McNulty. “All of a sudden, the police officer yelled, ‘She’s been found!’”

A bloodhound from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department, which Los Altos Police Chief Bob Lacey had requested, followed a sample of Tara’s scent. The dog searched the neighborhood for 75 minutes, retracing the girl’s trick-or-treating route from the previous night. The dog located Tara and greeted her with a lick on the cheek, according to Lacey.

“There are probably 300 Oak families and about 50 Oak teachers who would like to buy that dog a good steak dinner,” McNulty said. The outpouring of support for the search for the missing girl was staggering, he said.

“It kind of blew us all away,” he said. “I let (the police) know that we had many parents who would like to help. I simply contacted a few parents, they got on the phone and sent e-mails to others.”

By afternoon on the day she was missing, the e-mails had spread throughout the community, including to local news agencies and the Los Altos Chamber of Commerce, which asked its more than 500 downtown members to be on the lookout.

“People volunteered to cover various parts of the community,” McNulty said. “We were running off fliers, about 2,500, then people just took off.”

A handful of volunteers coordinated the search from the school, ensuring that all neighborhoods were covered. Oak school staff used the new districtwide e-mail list, asking for help from the elementary school community.

“One of the things that impressed me so much was how everybody felt like it was their child who was at risk,” McNulty said. “It was not somebody else’s child - it was their child.”

As relief spread across town, many residents wondered why a young person would run away and how it might be prevented in the future.

“The real key to this is just to have effective communication between parents, staff and students,” McNulty said. “The biggest key to effective communication is good listening. Listen with ears and eyes and your heart. That applies to all of our kids.”

As for Tara, “She just needs for it to be as normal as possible,” McNulty said. “I’m going to just tell her I’m glad she’s back.”

The Kapanys did return phone calls for this story.