Judith and Andrea Aboud live in a three-bedroom house in Half Moon Bay, an idyllic beach town an hour south of Petaluma. Andrea has a tidy pink bedroom, which she rearranges constantly. She covers her walls with elephant and dinosaur posters. She disdains “dolls and cutesy stuff.” Judith teaches elementary school in a town that used to seem worlds away: East Palo Alto, home to more murders per capita than anywhere in the world, outside of a war zone.
Since the abduction of Polly Half Moon Bay and East Palo Alto seem closer than ever, and Judith has become eternally vigilant. “We always review the rules if we’re going to the major stores,” says the mother, 46. “Andrea has to stay with me and not go to the kids’ department alone anymore. I’ve told her and my class all the lines not to fall for: ‘Help me find my puppy,’ “I’m filming a commercial’.” These days, Andrea is confronted with the typically grim national news stories: she and her mom were wrapping Christmas presents when they came across a television report about the 9- and 10-year-old girls abducted and killed in suburban St. Louis. But she’s also confronted by something grimmer still: the knowledge that Klaas’s hometown looked an awful lot like her own. Last week, when she slept over at her friend Sandy’s, the pair had every light on in the house: “We couldn’t sleep until 2 a.m. because we were so scared of all those stories about Polly Klaas and the other girls.”
Even in her own home, there are times when Andrea doesn’t want to go into the kitchen by herself, let alone venture into her dark bedroom. “I like being at school where there’s people everywhere,” she says. “I like that safe feeling where you don’t have to go down the hall and be scared of somebody popping out and taking you.” But even at school there have been spooky reminders: her lunchroom hung with a reward poster trumpeting Klaas’s abduction. Fear doesn’t leave much time for Andrea to just relax, or to pursue her true obsession, roller coasters. “Oh, I just love them,” she says. “I could live on one.” Some might say she already does.
