Polaroid Picture Found: The Disappearance of Tara Calico

Polaroid photograph found in Florida a year after Tara Calico’s disappearance in 1988. Photo courtesy of National Center for Missing Adults.

After a young woman went out for a bike ride and never returned home, a dark mystery has haunted the little town of Belen, New Mexico, for over thirty years.

Tara Calico, 19, left her home on Brugg Street on a beautiful sunny day at approximately 9:30 a.m. on September 20, 1988. She took her mother’s bicycle because her bicycle had a flat tire.

Normally, the freckled, green-eyed beauty would ride with her mother Patty Doel, but there had been an incident where Patty had felt they were followed during their ride and she no longer felt comfortable going along. Tara was committed to her exercise and despite her mother asking for Tara to carry mace, Tara refused.

That fateful day, Tara was scheduled to meet her boyfriend for a tennis game at 12:30 p.m. and joked with her mother that if she were to get a flat tire and had not returned, to come and look for her so she could meet her boyfriend on time.

Tara left her tennis clothes and school books on her bed as she had classes at 3:30 p.m. following the tennis match she had planned with her boyfriend.

Tara Calico was last seen riding a pink Huffy mountain bike with yellow control cables and sidewalls. Tara’s bike was never found. Photo courtesy of True Crime Times Blog.