WWW arkcity.net

By FOSS FARRAR
Staff Writer

Kayla Strange says she approaches life in Arkansas City differently since the disappearance of a 19-year-old Cowley College student last weekend.

"It changes everything," said Strange on Tuesday, her voice cracking with emotion.

Nineteen-year-old Jodi Sanderholm has been missing since Friday. Local residents' hopes that she would be found alive and well dimmed Tuesday evening after police announced her car had been pulled from Cowley State Fishing Lake east of Ark City. A body of a female also found Tuesday and will be examined for identification, police said.

Strange grew up in Arkansas City and graduated from the local high school in 2002. She works downtown, and is the mother of a two-year-old child.

"I start my car in the morning to warm it up," she said. "Now I lock it. I never did that before."

She added a sentiment that many share in Ark City: "It can't happen in a little town. You don't think things like that happen here but they do."

Strange was one of eight people interviewed Tuesday afternoon and today. Her comments were made before the police announced they had recovered the car and a body.

But she suspected something was wrong. "People who need to know, know what's going on," she said.

Two other downtown workers are 19-year-old Cowley sophomores, Lindsey Binford and Rachel Swope.

"I'm (already) careful about where I go by myself and now I'm more cautious about where I go and my surroundings," Swope said.

Binford agreed. "It makes me not want to walk to the car by myself, and I look in my car before I get in."

Another young woman who works in Ark City said she planned to take more aggressive measures to ensure her safety.

"I'm going to get a concealed and carry license when I'm 21," said Stacie Dubach, who is 20 and a Traveler employee. "Me and my friend are looking for a house and both of us decided to do this."

Dubach said that she also had talked a woman friend about getting mace that can be carried on a keychain for protection.

Of Jodi's disappearance, she said: You hear about it all the time, but it's a shocker that it could happen around here.

Seventeen-year-old Sabrina Nehring, a high school senior, said she had become more scared since the disappearance. But it really hasn't changed the way she's does anything.

"This hasn't really happened before since I've been here," Dehring, an Ark City native said.

Some Ark City parents also are concerned.

"Normally you think this kind of thing happens in a darkened place," said Joe Shriver, whose daughter, Jayme, is a Cowley sophomore. "But this apparently happened in broad daylight in our community."

Shriver commented on the disappearance today, after police issued a statement that they are preparing charges against "a known suspect."

He added that since Jodi went missing he has communicated more with his daughter.

"She reports where she is going and when she's coming home," Shriver said. "We've talked about it. I'm encouraging other parents to have these talks."

Because of cell phones and text messaging, communication is easier today than when he grew up, he noted.

Mayor Patrick McDonald also has a young daughter who attends high school. But he said Tuesday he hasn't changed his approach in raising her since Jodi's disappearance.

"Like any other parent I teach her the best I can," McDonald said. "But she has to have some freedom to visit friends and go to activities. I can't keep her from living her life."

Lee Chamberlain is another father with two grown sons.

"It will make kids tense, parents tense, police tense," he said. "It will create a community-wide tension on children. I don't know what I would do as a parent. It'd really be a struggle."