The ChillX Zone

On this date in 1988, Tara Calico went for a bike ride in New Mexico and never made it home

September 20, 2025 — BELEN, N.M. — Bright morning. Pink ten-speed. A 19-year-old college kid with a schedule and a deadline. Tara Calico left her house at 9:30 a.m. on September 20, 1988. She told her mom to come get her if she wasn’t back by noon. She was never seen again.

The route was routine: State Road 47, a long, straight ribbon south of town. By late morning, drivers reported a light-colored pickup shadowing a cyclist. Along the shoulder, searchers later found a cracked cassette, part of a Walkman, a breadcrumb trail that went nowhere. No bike. No Tara. Just heat and questions.

Ten months later, a second gut punch — a Polaroid. Found in a Florida convenience-store lot. A teenage girl, bound and gagged, beside a younger boy, in what looks like the back of a van. The film stock dated it to mid-1989 or later. Families in New Mexico froze at the resemblance. Was it Tara? Was the boy another local child who’d vanished? Analyses split. The FBI called it inconclusive. The photo never gave up a name.

The case went national: magazine spreads, TV segments, tip lines that rang and rang. Leads curdled. Rumors hardened into theories: a hit-and-cover-up by local teens; an abduction by someone who knew the route; a staged photo meant to taunt. None of it crossed the finish line. No arrests. No recovery. A cold case, still running hot in the minds of the people who loved her.

In recent years, investigators in Valencia County say they’ve pushed the boulder uphill — named possible offenders, pushed evidence to a D.A. Hope spikes, then settles. The family keeps the porch light on anyway. Thirty-seven years is a long night.

Is there a paranormal link? Only the kind that clings to unsolved crimes: a photo that looks like a message from nowhere; sightings that never hold still; the stubborn feeling that somebody’s there just out of frame. People bring candles, psychics, dreams. Others bring lab reports and timelines. Both camps chase the same ghost: truth.

What still matters

• The date: September 20, 1988 — the ride that didn’t end.
• The artifacts: fragments of a Walkman; a Polaroid that refuses to answer.
• The ask: If you were on NM-47 that morning; if you remember the truck; if you’ve seen that van — don’t assume it’s too late. Cold cases thaw on one memory.

Tonight, on September 20, 2025, the road looks the same. Straight. Sunburnt. Quiet. Somewhere, a mother still hears the front door and waits for a voice that should have followed. The picture in the national file drawer is frozen. But cases like this have a way of moving when nobody’s looking. And sometimes the scariest thing isn’t the dark. It’s not knowing.