Wednesday, April 26, 2006
GERALDO RIVERA: Family hope good will come of show
The Kamloops Daily News by Jason Hewlett
A U.S. TV news crew arrived on Kamloops family’s doorstep Tuesday hoping to bring new life to the search for their missing daughter.
Carlin DeGuerin Miller, a field producer for Geraldo Rivera’s syndicated news program Geraldo at Large, arrived at Glendene Grant’s Dominion Street home at noon with a freelance camera crew from Vancouver in tow.
The show’s producer sent DeGuerin Miller, a four-year news veteran, from the program’s New York headquarters to Kamloops to interview Grant and her ex-husband Dwight Foster.
Foster and Grant’s daughter, Jessie Foster, 21, disappeared into the Las Vegas underworld a month ago.
“When something like this happens to someone who is sweet and nice and good…it’s almost a cautionary tale of what can happen,” DeGuerin Miller said while the crew set up lights and a camera in Grant’s living room.
She hoped the three-minute segment would raise awareness about Jessie’s story and spark a memory in someone who might know something about her disappearance.
“A lot of times that does happen,” DeGuerin Miller said.
Other crews were in Las Vegas interviewing Mike Kirkman, a private investigator hired by Foster, and investigators with the North Las Vegas Police Department, she said.
Grant said the interview’s focus is on a missing Canadian girl and her worried family and not that Jessie is a Vegas call girl with a record of prostitution.
“She’s a young girl coerced into a lifestyle that she couldn’t get out of,” she said. “With the Geraldo at Large show people will think of her like that.”
The TV crew attracted friends and family members from across Kamloops. Grant was pleased by the outpouring of support.
“This is the happiest I’ve been since Jessie went missing. It’s a different kind of happiness. Not a giddy happiness,” she said before accepting a hug from a friend.
Efforts to find Jessie have cost the family a lot of money. A fundraising steak and chicken dinner is organized at Malone’s On 8th At the Courtyard on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. Tickets cost $12. Call Grant at 374-6137 for more information.
Foster said the family appreciates any help people can provide.
“Jessie’s grandmother in Nova Scotia gave $1,000 to keep the search going. I feel awful taking this kind of money but she said this is her granddaughter.”
Jessie moved to Las Vegas almost a year before she disappeared. Kirkman’s investigation revealed she started dating a man who may be a pimp shortly after she moved there.
DeGuerin Miller said the segment airs Thursday on syndicated channels in the U.S.
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