The Searcher: James Spring (page 3 of 4)

Images from this article

Photographed by Tim Tadder

Spring near his home in San Diego: "Baja is my backyard."

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Photographed by Tim Tadder

Viana, right, and Faith Carelli inspired a stranger's quest to do something meaningful.

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Courtesy James Spring

Spring's "kidnapped" poster was crucial to locating the girls.

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Photographed by Tim Tadder

Faith is doing well in the care of her aunt and uncle, Sherry and Rob Doubleday.

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Photographed by Tim Tadder

Viana is back with her grandparents, Ellen and Gene Pauly (background, middle and right).

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Courtesy James Spring

Spring's "kidnapped" poster was crucial to locating the girls.

Kellie Spring cried when her husband first told her what he was going to do. But when she saw Viana's picture, she agreed, reluctantly, that yes, he had to go. She asked him only to wait a couple of days before leaving. He needed a plan. He needed supplies. Mostly, he needed to give her a chance to accept what he was about to do.

Spring agreed to wait—and started working the phones. At first he assumed there would be an official search party to join, but after calling law-enforcement officials, it became clear that no one in Mexico was looking for the fugitives or the children. If he went, he'd be on his own.

Next he contacted the Pauly family. Missing-children cases draw attention from all kinds of characters, so he knew he might be seen as some kind of crackpot. Indeed, when he talked to Rob Doubleday, Viana's uncle and the family's spokesman, they'd just heard from self-proclaimed psychics, sure they knew where the children were. Doubleday thanked Spring for his interest but doubted he could help.

Spring made it clear he was going to try anyway. The next day, he had 2,500 posters printed up in Spanish, with secuestrada ("kidnapped") in bold letters across the top. He included photos of Viana, Faith, Michele, and Carelli, along with a shot of a white 1996 Mercury Mystique, the last car they'd been seen in.

He packed a flare gun, a machete, and all the food he thought he might need. And then, early Sunday morning, 36 hours after his initial Internet search, as Kellie watched with Addie at her side and Caden in her arms, James Spring drove away.

"I knew it was important to him and I had to let him go," Kellie says now, recalling how frightened she'd been. "But he was looking for people who were suspected of murder, and neither of us knew what they might do to protect themselves."

As Spring drove across the border that Sunday morning, his plan was to plaster posters at every Pemex gas station and police headquarters between Ensenada and San Quintin.

He never doubted he would find the girls. He'd lived in Baja for four years in his 20s. "I know the whole 1,059 miles of it," he says. "I know every place to look, even the ones the Mexican police don't know about."

Driving through tourist towns and fishing villages, places that weren't much more than a collection of shacks, he thought about what it might be like to confront Carelli: Does he know his way around? Does he speak Spanish? Does he have money? Does he have weapons? That night, in San Quintin, he came across a Mercury Mystique, just like the one Carelli had been driving. What are the odds? Spring said to himself, excited that he might have stumbled onto the couple so quickly.

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