Vanished

Pretty teenager Chelsea King, 17, of Poway, Calif.a well-to-do suburb northeast of San Diegois believed to have left her home about 2 p.m. on Thursday, February 25, 2010, to go for a run at Rancho Bernardo Community Park. It was part of her normal routine to go out running, because the straight-A student was a member of the Poway High School cross-country team. She had done it many times before, and her parents, Brent and Kelly King, had never had cause for alarm or fear for her safety on her previous runs. Running, her mother said, was an outlet Chelsea used to relieve the stress associated with school, which she took very seriously. Chelsea had made up her mind that she would go on to college following graduation from high school, and was considering a career in which she could pursue two of her primary interests, writing and protecting the environment. Although she had researched nearly 100 colleges, she had already been accepted by the University of Washington and the University of British Columbia.

Chelsea's parents last saw her the previous evening at approximately 9:30 p.m., when she went to bed after playing French horn in a school concertshe also played for the San Diego Youth Symphony. Her parents heard her get up and leave the house at about 6:15 a.m. on Thursday to keep a peer-counseling appointment she had made for before school that day. However, when they returned home from work and shopping at 5:30 p.m., Chelsea was not at home.