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The Baker's Field 3 is proudly part of the ACAST creator network. There's an unspoken part of being a crime reporter where you have to ask yourself the questions, How am I going to make this victim stand out? How am I going to make people remember this case? How am I going to make them care? Sometimes it's the crime itself that will grab people's attention. Like a case I covered where a young woman was walking down the street on her birthday holding her birthday cake when someone gunned her down. The crime scene was surreal. Icing smeared the pavement. The cake was smashed next to her body. It was the day she came into the world and the day someone took her out of it. But more often than not, if you live in an area with a high crime rate like Bakersfield, the crimes can start to blend together. Most of the cases involve adult male victims who are shot to death. Most missing persons cases involve adults who don't have stable lives. It's a strange concept, really, that the most horrific thing imaginable, losing a loved one to violence can be difficult to stand out in a newscast.

A story about a five-year-old having a lemonade stand to raise money for their school can be more memorable to viewers. For me, making a victim stand out is important. It's important for keeping their case in the forefront of people's minds, which can help the chances of it being solved. But it's also what every victim deserves to be honored and remembered the way their loved ones would want them to be. You have to go deeper than just the they would light up any room they walked into and they give you the shirt off their back. Because even if that's true, we've all heard it too many times about too many people. You need something that made that person special. Everyone has it. Sometimes it's just a little harder to find for some more than others. Micah, like so many other missing persons, was an adult who at the time was living an unstable life. But once I started looking for what made him special, I found it easily. I'm Olivia LaVoyce, and this is The Bakersfield Three.

Micah was very almost intuitive that people who needed him, I don't know how to express it really, but he didn't just like you as a friend. If you were his friend, you were his.

Mika's mom, Cheryl, says from a young age, Micah seemed to have an emotional intelligence, a lot of people never achieve, particularly when it came to coping with tragedy and helping others navigate it.

People, they'll say, Oh, you're so strong for talking to us. How do you do this? I think we do it because Mika taught us how to grieve with people. Long ago, he was very connected to individuals in their grief. Even without his family and parents really being that aware of it at the time.

Over the years, I heard from a man who told me the story of his father who got into a terrible accident and became paralyzed. The man was a teenager at the time, and he said it was so traumatic and painful for him that he began distancing himself from his dad when his dad needed him most. He said it was Micah, also just a teen himself, who recognized this and went to him and made him confront his emotions and deal with them. He says Micah's advice changed his life and saved his relationship with his father. I heard a couple other stories about how Micah helped people deal with hardship and grief. But one story in particular really stands out. I learned early on that yellow roses were significant to Micah, but only recently I found out why.

Yellow was Jennifer's favorite color. Rose is her middle name. So it was just always the yellow roses just clicked.

Joanne Burrow's only daughter, Jennifer, or Jenny B, as her friends called her, went to high school with Micah.

Micah was her best guyfriend. And as you see, Micah wrote right there, Best Friends Forever, on her yearbook and on the pictures, they were really close. He was always real supportive of her. He was very supportive after she was gone, too.

One morning their senior year, Jennifer was driving to work when something that still-unexplainable happened.

There was no other car. There was nothing in the road. There was no animal. There was nothing. She just lost control and pretty much was gone at the scene.

The loss devastated Jennifer's entire friend group.

In the beginning, they would come, they would want to hang out in her room, look at her pictures and talk about her. But Micah was the only one who was consistent. He would come over every year, February second, the day that the accident happened, and April first, the day of her birthday.

For 17 years, as long as Jennifer had been alive, Micah spent those two days with her family.

He always remembered. No matter what he was doing, he would come February second, April first. Whatever he was doing in his life, he always remembered Jennifer on those days. Every year until he didn't. When he went missing, people started calling me. Did Micah call you on the first? Did he show up? No, he didn't.

As Micah's loved ones put the pieces together, they determined Micah had been missing for a week before not showing up on Joanne's door on her daughter's birthday with a yellow rose in hand. At the time, Micah was 34 years old. But in order to really understand the events that led up to his disappearance, we have to go back to when Micah was just a boy.

As a child, Micah was precocious and smart and funny and clever, and he always interacted almost better with adults than other children his age.

Micah's mom, Sheryl, says Micah was very bright from an early age and took pride in that. At five years old, he insisted on hanging a poster in his bedroom that showed all the US presidents.

Then he proceeded to memorize all of them and their vice presidents when he was in kindergarten. He'd show off that he could point to him, and then he could do it without looking.

His family nickname was Stats because he could tell you statistics on pretty much anything. He had a passion for education. He excelled in all his classes. He was the star of the debate and forensics teams. After high school, it was important to Micah to go to the same college in the south as his grandparents. He was just a few weeks into his freshman year when terrorists flew two planes into the Twin Towers on September 11th, 2001.

He told us, I'm going to stay through the end of this year, but I need to come home. I think I'm going to enlist in the military. Of course, we were very worried about that, very concerned, and I did not want him really to do that. But he came home that following summer and said, I'm going in the Navy.

Mike, his mom, Cheryl, says Micah was very passionate about serving his country after 3,000 Americans were killed in the terrorist attacks. In order to do so, he may have glossed over some health issues he had with the growth in his throat, but he couldn't hide it for long enough.

He was ill, a lot of basic training, and it caused a lot of infection. He was very, very sick. They told him that they were going to discharge him. He came home, he was devastated by that. Just really took that very hard.

But he tried to accept it the best he could. Once he was back home, he sought medical treatment for his throat.

Soon after he was healed up from that, he decided I think banking would be fun.

Ultimately, he became a licensed financial advisor working at Wells Fargo while also finishing his degree.

He just did very well. Really, anything he applied himself to, he could do really well. Things seemed to go relatively smoothly for a long time. He had a good, I think, young adult career going. He was set. He was really set for the long haul.

His personal life was also looking promising. At Wells Fargo, he met a hardworking young woman. They fell in love, got married, and not long after had a baby.

He always said that he is the best part of me. He's the best part of me.

It seems like it was the best time in Micah's life, transitioning from his 20s to his 30s, he had a thriving career and he created a family he was so proud of. His Facebook page gives a little glimpse into what this time in his life was like and what his wife and son meant to him. One post of his reads, Fatherhood is more than a responsibility. It's a gift. And since the day I became a father, each passing day has become progressively sweeter than the day before it. To share my life with such an incredible young man is a blessing beyond description. Today, I'm thankful for the gift of fatherhood. Fatherhood also seemed to give him a deep appreciation for his parents. In numerous posts, he refers to Cheryl, his mom, as his very best friend in this life.

We talked a lot. We discussed every political election, every county election, propositions. We'd sit and talk about pros and cons. He would hear something on the news and he'd call me and he'd want to see what I thought about it.

Cheryl worked at a local university teaching economics. Each semester, Micah would be a special guest, often helping her students open their first savings account.

I had students who would come by my office and say, Your son really did a great job, and I think I'm going into economics because of that, or I think I'm going to switch to finance because of that. I loved having him there. He'd come by every once in a while. If I wasn't at my office, he'd leave a post-it note on my door. I have one of those notes in my bedroom now that says, I love you, Mom. Your favorite son, Micah. He's my favorite oldest son, was always my response to that. And I miss him. I miss the person he was when he was well. When he was well, he was wonderful. Talked too much. He was too loud in a room. He was more than everyone else in the room sometimes. But he really loved people.

Mike's wellness was a fragile thing, constantly threatened and eventually overtaken by the same growth in his throat that caused him to have to leave the Navy. Despite having surgery, the growth grew back. It had caused him chronic pain. As a result, his family says over a period of time, several different doctors wrote him prescriptions for painkillers. With everything the medical community knows today, the CDC recommends people take opioids for three days or less because some studies show it can take just five days for the drugs to change one's brain chemistry. Opioids trigger endorphins, muffling pain, and creating a temporary feeling of pleasure. But doctors have found that the body builds up tolerance fast. Suddenly, the pain is back, coupled with crippling withdrawal symptoms. The patient feels significantly worse than before and becomes desperate for relief. In time, this happened to Micah, and like millions of other patients, when his doctors cut him off, he turned to buying oxy from a dealer. One of the pills he got off the street was laced with fentanyl, causing Micah to overdose. Narcan just barely saved his life. When Micah realized how close he'd come to death, it seemed like rock bottom.

The life he'd worked so hard for was slipping from his grasp. He was a husband and father with a successful finance career. How would he become someone found slumped behind the wheel of their car, dependent on a stranger calling 911 and paramedics being able to break through the window before it was too late? He wanted it to be a wake-up call. He went into various recovery programs and vowed to keep fighting to get his old life back. But after he OD'd, his family says he was never the same. When the paramedics revived him, they told him he had lost oxygen to his brain from not breathing. We don't know for sure, but loved ones believed this caused a brain injury that severely impacted everything in his life. He told his mom, Cheryl, he couldn't get his thoughts to connect anymore. Work suddenly was extraordinarily difficult. Cheryl would later find notepads where he'd try to write down lists of tasks he needed to complete. Cheryl said they were chaotic and on the back of one, Micah had scribbled, I just can't think. In time, he lost his job and then his insurance, which led him to losing his doctors and the medical programs he needed.

Eventually, his marriage fell apart. He lost his family, and that was everything. From there, his mental health began deteriorating. Cheryl spent afternoons locked in her office crying, sometimes screaming on the phone with local mental health officials, begging for help with Micah. The response was always the same. Programs were either full or if there was a spot, they'd say no one could make Micah get help. He was an adult, which made his parents essentially powerless.

It was very, very hard to watch. We knew the impact it was having on his family, and we knew the impact it was having on us. He was very angry at us because he felt like we were... He was very paranoid. He thought we were taking everyone else aside but his. He thought we were not doing everything we could to help him. Unbelievable paranoid at that point and chaotic, and thinking was very unlike Micah. His personality was changing.

By summer 2017, Micah's life was drastically different than it had been just the year prior. By this point, he'd lost custody of his son, and his circle of friends had changed as well.

We found out later. He was at a friend's house and they were all like, Well, hey, you went to boot camp. You know how to put guns together?

Micah was offered to use his military skills to make some money building guns.

He knew that it was risky behavior that it wasn't right.

Cheryl says Micah seemed to rationalize it by saying, In other states, the same practice is in a legal. Just in California, where the gun laws are stricter than other parts of America. However, he may have made sense of it. Cheryl believes it was a choice that opened him up to a world that Mika was not fit to enter.

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Micah wasn't a gangster. Micah didn't belong in this lifestyle, and he knew it. He talked too much. You could tell he wasn't from the lifestyle because he was curious. He wanted to know everything.

This is the guy we're calling Sam. He's the same guy who called the cops and got Matt Vandercastel arrested. In 2017, Sam was a drug dealer who met Micah through the same guys that Micah was helping build guns. What were your impressions of Micah?

Honestly, I thought he was a cop.

He.

Was just super well-dressed, super nice, the nicest person I've ever met in the dope game. He never had a bad thing to say about anybody. He was just really cool. I didn't figure him for a drug addict like that. He was just a goofy goober. He was funny and he was that. Like I said, he was one of the nicest people I've ever met.

Another friend Micah met in the news circle said he loved how Micah would sometimes come over in a suit and tie. They thought of him as classy and educated. Everyone agreed Micah did not belong in this new world. Did you get the sense that he probably didn't realize what he had gotten himself into?

Yeah, I don't think he knew how deep the water was.

Sam says he's clean now, trying to live a normal life. But back in 2017 and 2018, his life was anything but. He was surprised that people like Micah, Bailey, and Matt Queen wanted to associate with him.

They look really clean cat. That. Then he throws someone like me, and I've got 90% of my body tattooed. I'm from the ghetto. You wouldn't think those circles meshed very well.

While speaking with Sam, he made it clear the majority of people in Micah's new circle weren't the friends most people would want.

I mean, think about what we do to our families when we were off doing drugs and how we're ripping our families off and stealing from our family. What makes you think a friendship is worth more than that?

Sam says when drugs and money are involved, you play by a different set of rules in life.

I would chop up a friend of mine by- I might put a bullet in his leg.

At one point, we got on this topic.

I had $200 worth of dope come up missing out of my house one time, and I held everybody in my house at gunpoint until I found it.

I'm just curious, were these people in the room, were they your friends or business associates?

Some of them were my friends. One of them was an ex-girlfriend. That was still really good friends with me.

When you hold people like that at gunpoint, what happens afterwards? Do you apologize? Do they still want to hang out with you?

I told them sorry is a big misunderstanding. Here's a sack of dope for your troubles. Just know I'm not going to play about anything missing out of my house. You've got to be very strong-handed when it comes to showing people I'm not one to mess with. I'm not one that you steal from. I'm not one you talk shit about.

Did you ever hurt someone?

Yeah, I think everybody in that life has.

Do you want to elaborate on that?

No. There's no statute of limitations on things.

There's no statute of limitations on most things except for murder.

Yeah, they have. Yeah, there is.

That's a glimpse into some of the kinds of people that Micah's skills from the Navy and subsequent talent building guns opened him up to.

You knowI've always said, You just can't dabble. You just can't dabble with evil people. You can't just accidentally get your foot in the door because I believe evil can take you over. If you just open that door a bit, a little bit more and a little bit more.

Micah told his parents about some of the things he'd heard and seen, and they were skeptical it was true.

It just seemed like such a bad movie. It just seemed like an episode of The Sopranos, which he loved. He loved The Sopranos. It was just like, Really? This just doesn't seem like… Are you sure? He would tell us about being… Never mentioned names, but he told us about being kidnapped and locked in the trunk of a car and having his hands and feet zip-tied and being hauled out to a middle of nowhere in an orchard and have his shoes taken from him and being told to walk back home or whatever. Who here is that? We're just middle income, suburban family. We're going to work and coming home. Our young adult son is telling us about people locking him in their trunk and hauling him to an orchard and holding the gun to his head. What would any family think? What would your family think if they heard that story about you?

Keep in mind at this time, his family knew Micah was struggling with his mental health and substance abuse. He'd become increasingly paranoid.

It'd be, Well, Micah, that just sounds pretty farfetched. Really? I mean, we would make, and of course, we have a huge guilt around all of that that we carry with us because we really made light of it and… We didn't believe him and we begged him to go to the police. We begged him. If this is real, we will go with you and you need to talk to the police and he wouldn't go. He was very, very afraid.

Numerous people who spent a lot of time with Micah in the months before he went missing all described him as paranoid and very frightened. They also all mentioned how Micah would see things in this new crowd, and he would take on almost a vigilante role. This came up in the previous episode. Here's Cheryl talking about some information she got after Micah first went missing.

I had already gotten two phone calls from two different young women that Micah had gotten out of, what we later would know to be trafficking situations where they were being held against their will and were being held to do things with men in order to take care of some debt they owed. Maybe it was for drugs, maybe it was for other things. We knew from these two individuals that Micah had helped them get out of that situation, that he had heard about it, he had gotten wind of it, and he went and physically got them. I think that in those last few weeks, Micah had figured out, I'm just going to play both sides of this fence.

Playing both sides of the fence, that is exactly what Matthew Queen said in his Facebook post. It sounded as if Micah was pretending to be cool with people he thought were involved in trafficking women while also helping those women at the same time, which illustrates this strange, delicate, precarious state of his life. His family saw his fear, what they thought was just paranoia, increasing. Here's Cheryl describing one of the last conversations she had with her son.

He told me someone was trying to kill him and he had to be as far away from his family, from us as possible. I begged him to let me drive him back east to family. At that moment, it was real enough in his head that I begged him to let me take him out of town. I said, Nobody will ever find you on the end of a dirt road in the middle of nowhere in the Midwest. His response was, But they'll use you and they'll use them to make me come back. Lives have been threatened, not just mine, is what he said.

By them, Micah was referring to his ex-wife and his son, which led him to say something he'd never been able to admit before.

He literally said, I hate to say this, but she was right. She was right to take custody of him because I know that I've endangered him and she did the right thing and she will do whatever it takes to protect him.

After that conversation, Cheryl says she saw Micah one last time in mid-March 2018. He was with a woman named Sarah. They appeared to be casually dating. But this isn't the same Sarah who Bailey was friends with and Queen started dating. This is a different Sarah. This Sarah is Mika's age. We're going to refer to her as Sarah G.

They got in the back of the car and he introduced me. She was very nice, polite. He was telling her that I didn't listen to music on my radio. I always listen to audiobooks. He was teasing me about that because he very much loved music. It was lighthearted. Everything seemed fine. That was the last time I saw him was walking away from me with this young lady.

A few days later, Micah was with Sarah G again when he called Cheryl.

He was very agitated and he said, Mom, I really need your help. I was like, What do you need, Micah? He said, I need to pay for this hotel room for the friend of mine that was in the car with me. She can't go home and she has her dogs with her. I really need to pay for the hotel room.

Cheryl had recently given Micah money and she told Micah she didn't understand why his friend needed a room. Why couldn't they just go to Micah's place?

He's like, Oh, well, we just we can't. Can't go to my place. Why can't you? Why can't you help me? He was very angry at me for not paying for this hotel room for this young lady. He started yelling at me. I had had enough. I didn't want to hear him yelling at me. I just said, Mike, I can't talk to you. I hung up. That was the very last time I talked to him. I hung up on it. I don't hang up on people anymore. I hear people say, Oh, just hang up. Oh, just hang up anything. Don't do it. Just don't hang up because it might be the last time that you talk to them, and you'll have to carry that around forever.

April first, 2018, came and went without Micah showing up at Joanne Burrow's home with a yellow rose in hand. Something was wrong. And suddenly, every word Micah said to his parents they ever doubted, swallowed them whole in an ocean of guilt.

We didn't believe him. We just didn't believe him. And we live with that every day.

But Cheryl didn't drown in her guilt. As she simply put it, that wasn't an option. As his mother, she was going to do whatever it took to find her son. As I was writing this episode, I found a post on Micah's Facebook page from a few years before his disappearance. Micah described an incident in which he and his father thought Cheryl had gone missing. The post explains it was a misunderstanding that ended with the police finding a confused, somewhat embarrassed Cheryl teaching an Econ class at her university. As it turned out, Micah and his dad had forgotten that Cheryl was substitute teaching another class that went late, giving her a clear explanation as to why she was nowhere to be found on campus when her usual class ended hours earlier. Micah wrote, quote, I've never felt more terrified and helpless in my entire life than what I felt this evening. Ever. I love you so much, mom. You're the glue that holds me together. I thought about for how that hour or so, Micah felt that hopelessness and fear not knowing where his mother was, that she would come to feel for him a couple years later.

Only it wouldn't be an anecdote to share with Facebook friends. For Cheryl, it would be life altering and never ending. When Micah wrote the post, his life was stable, full of love, achievements, milestones. So many of us dream of reaching. It was unimaginable to think that one day he would struggle with addiction and lose it all.

It absolutely can happen to anybody. Lance and I have been married almost 40 years. We lived in the suburbs. We both had great jobs. We took our kids to church. They grew up in youth group. We were living the American dream. If it can happen to our family, it can happen to anybody listening to this.

The extent of what would be revealed about the new world Micah found himself in and why he'd vanished would be darker than anyone could have ever imagined.

He had just looked like he was scared and he wasn't scared for him. It looked more like he was.

Scared.

For me because he knew.

Who shot him.

I don't care if I live or die since this has happened.

That's next time on The Bakers Field Three.

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