EDITOR'S notebook

Wife's Disappearance Ends in Strange Twist

No one would want to go through what Andre Khaleel, owner of Quick Set Printing in North Miami, FL, has experienced. His wife, Olga, had been missing since January 10—the afternoon she dropped their two young children off at her mother-in-law's house before driving to a bank in North Miami Beach to make a $2,400 cash deposit for their business. Olga's last known contact that day was a brief conversation with her secretary back at the shop to say that she had just arrived at the bank and would call her right back. The 32-year-old woman never made the deposit and just seemed to vanish. Her disappearance captured national attention. In addition to extensive media coverage within the Miami area, a grieving Andre Khaleel appeared on both CNN's Paula Zahn show and Fox News broadcasts.

Obviously devastated, Andre was convinced she would not have run off on her own accord. "I'm just so distraught and have never been so scared in my entire life. I just don't have words to describe to you what I'm going through," Khaleel told me during an interview with him more than two weeks after Olga disappeared. "The kids are asking questions at this point. They know something is wrong." He added that, as a couple, they rarely spent much time apart between running their small commercial print shop for the past 10 years and sharing the responsibility of raising seven-year-old and 18-month-old kids. Married 12 years, Olga is Cuban and Andre is Jamaican, but of Lebanese descent.

As one might expect from someone in his predicament, Khaleel felt frustrated that the police investigation had been unable to generate any leads. About 31⁄2 years ago, he was held at gunpoint during a robbery at Quick Set Printing and—as his mind wandered—even questioned out loud to me whether there might be any connection to that incident and his wife's disappearance.

Andre didn't sit idle, though. He put his business into action to help get the word out. With the help of family and friends, Khaleel distributed nearly 175,000 color posters and flyers that were printed on his company's Heidelberg GTOs. And he even hired homeless people to help post and dispurse them night and day. The Printing Association of Florida also sent an e-mail blast to raise awareness among South Florida members after I alerted them to the plight of their fellow printer.

Khaleel also went so far as to hire helicopters, at the cost of $1,000 per hour, to scour the Miami-Dade and Broward counties, including the Everglades and area canals, in search of his wife's missing SUV. One canal, with an oil slick on the surface, turned into a dead end after a search by police divers. Andre figured he easily spent $25,000 of his own money to find Olga.

But it was the power of print, naturally, that would bring the case of the missing wife to a close. Just as we went to press, Olga was found alive by police on February 5 after an anonymous tipster recognized her from one of the posted flyers he had seen. Similar to the case in Atlanta of the "runaway bride," authorities determined that she was never abducted, but had disappeared voluntarily due to some personal problems. Despite the manhours and expense various police agencies—and Andre—spent looking for Olga, no charges are expected to be filed against her.

Mark T. Michelson&000;&000;