Thursday, May 19, 2016: Holy Cow Sam! So it turns out that parent who reached out to us on Facebook is of one of your classmates parents! Super nice people. They were one of the many who responded to the Amber Alert a few months ago. You were in some parent teacher event at school when the Amber Alert went off all across Mexico and and within in minutes dozens of people sent investigators pictures of them with you and the caption, “Is this the Samantha you looking for? She’s standing right next to me!”
Olivia was kind enough to send us more pictures of that day just to prove they were who they said they were. This is legit because we never said anything to anyone. Word about your abduction and Adriana Coronel Tenorio (AKA Adriana Howitt Coronel, Ari Coronel, Ari Coronel Tenorio, Ari Howitt, Ari Howitt Coronel) spread like wildfire throughout the school. Nobody in your school has heard from you since Adriana was arrested in March. They miss you Sam and hope to see you soon. That jives with what investigators told us already.
So, I am in Denver on business until Saturday. Denver was home to a big sports retail company called Sports Authority. Sports Authority was a national chain of stores where you can buy anything and everything athletic. I say ‘was’ because the entire organization is going out of business. Online shopping has crippled the sports retail industry. These days, unless you have a specific niche, you have no business having the kind of foot print they did.
If there is a silver lining in stores closing like this, it’s that everything is on sale. In this case 60-75% off. My friend was looking for designer under wear. I was in the market for a big ass fire & water proof safe…and they had one on sale. Not sure this thing would have fit in the cargo hold of the airplane let alone the overhead bin – hahaha. None the less, it was fascinating to see the demise of an iconic brand from the inside. These stores were about the size of the average Wal-Mart. Imagine Wal-Mart with no shelves and nothing on the walls and everything piled in the middle of the floor. That’s what we walked into today. College kids were all over this, getting 1/2 naked in front of everybody trying on things right there in the middle of this huge pile of stuff. Not a care in the world. It was funny. After all, the dressing rooms were no longer there. Me? Even after I offered a generous incentive to the clerks to take the safe to a UPS location. However I could not get Sports Authority to ship the safe to my house because the store was closing forever the very next day. All deals were final. So, I found a $20 shirt for $3. Not bad.
