Family Haunted By Vanishing 8 Years Ago

REDMOND

Whenever Judy Hagel hears or reads that remains have been found in a remote area, she holds her breath and tries not to be rocked by mixed emotions.

Hagel and her husband, Jerry, hope their daughter Jami has finally been found; and they hope she hasn't been.

"We need to know, but we're afraid," Hagel says.

Jami Sherer was 26 when she disappeared eight years ago this week. Her 1980 Mazda RX7 was found six days later, abandoned in a church parking lot in the 14700 block of First Avenue Northeast in Shoreline.

No one has heard from her since that Sunday in 1990 when she headed from Redmond to her mother's Bellevue home. The loss has been huge for Hagel, although there are constant reminders that bring her daughter to mind.

"It sounds funny. Jami loved pomegranates and when I'm at the market and see them stacked there, my mind begins to wander, thinking of her," said Hagel.

Nights, too, are hard. "I can be really tired and getting to sleep when suddenly, like a light bulb, there it is and I just can't sleep, wondering," she said. And with each Sept. 30, Hagel tries not to think about another year passing by without knowing.

Ten-year-old Tyler, Sherer's son, lives with the Hagels, who now are his guardians. He was 2 when his mother vanished.

"The older he gets the more he looks like her . . . expressions . . . so many little things," Hagel said.

The night before Sherer disappeared, she had an argument with her husband, Steve, and left with Tyler to spend the night with her parents. She said she planned to move in with them the next day.

While she was there, her husband called and asked her to come home to talk things over, Hagel said. "We tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn't listen. Steve is pretty persuasive," she said.

Later that day, Sherer called to say she would stop at the Taco Time in Redmond's Bear Creek shopping center for a bite to eat and would then head for the Hagel home.

That was the last anyone heard from her.

When her car was found, a number of personal items were in it - a bag full of clothing she was bringing to her mother's house, a curling iron. Her purse was missing, although a payroll check from her job at Microsoft has never been cashed.

The Friday before she disappeared, Sherer had been promoted, but never got to work at her new post.

Tyler, a fifth-grader, thinks his mother is dead, at least that's what his father has told him, Hagel said.

"We don't discuss it too much. He's not comfortable. Whenever I bring it up, he changes the subject. It breaks my heart . . . he feels he's been robbed of having a mother," she said.

Young Tyler talks to his father once or twice a week on the phone. He's visited Tyler a few times on trips to Washington from Arizona, where he moved several years ago.

But Steve Sherer has his own problems.

Last Thursday, he surrendered to Redmond police to face the consequences for outstanding warrants and is now in the King County Jail. At an arraignment Friday, he was given consecutive one-year jail sentences for two drunken-driving convictions.

Redmond Police Lt. Jim Taylor, who heads the detective unit, said that Steve Sherer "continues to be a person of interest" in the investigation of his wife's disappearance.