Even though it’s been 30 years since Alma “Violet” Root disappeared, her sisters still catch themselves looking twice when they see someone who resembles her.

“It took me a long time to quit looking — it took me forever,” said Root’s older sister, Laura Huff. “I still sit with her book of her belongings and wish I knew where she was.”

Huff remembers the last day she saw her younger sister.

It was midnight New Year’s Day 1980, and the two girls had just finished banging their grandmother’s pots and pans in celebration.

A new beginning had rung in for the foster-care youths, who were finally living together after years of living with whatever family would take them, or, as Huff said, whatever family wanted the money for caring for foster kids.

But the reunion didn’t last long.

Root, who was 14 at the time, called up her then 25-year-old boyfriend, Scot Petschek. She left her grandmother’s Applegate home that night and her family never heard from her again.

“I begged her not to go,” Huff recalled. “I said, ‘please don’t go, please don’t go.’”

“‘I have to go,’” Huff remembers her sister saying. “And she left with him. That’s the last time I seen her.”

The story of Root’s disappearance is one of a troubled childhood. Root and her sister were the victims of child molestation and the young teen had tried to escape her troubles on more than one occasion.

The story of Huff’s search is one of getting the door slammed in her face by the man who last saw her sister and begging police to take the disappearance of a habitual runaway seriously.

To this day, investigators have found no trace of Root.

To this day, Petschek, who investigators say is a person of interest in the case, remains adamant that he had nothing to do with the fate of a girl who “could do what she want.”

‘She was just a throwaway’

Root’s disappearance is one of a handful of cold missing person’s cases that Lorrie Lewis, an investigative assistant in Placer County’s crimes against persons unit, says she has on file.

Lewis said Root’s case hadn’t been worked on much after the initial report.

It wasn’t until 1991 when Root’s father, who had recently been released from prison on a conviction of molesting his daughter, came to Lewis to ask if she knew where his daughter was.

“When I came into this assignment there were a lot of cold cases that weren’t in binders,” Lewis said. “Her father came to the Sheriff’s Office and wanted to know if we found his daughter.”

Lewis didn’t have an answer for him then and she doesn’t have an answer for Root’s living family members now.

At one point, Lewis’ investigation led her to a well behind Petschek’s grandmother’s Penryn home.

“The rumor was she may have been put in a well,” Lewis said. “We went down with a camera in the well and didn’t find anything.”

Lewis’ investigation also led her and a Placer Sheriff’s sergeant to Petschek’s front door when he lived in El Dorado County a few years ago.

“The hair stood up on my neck and the sergeant said it did on his as well,” Lewis recalled.

The two told Petschek that they were looking into Root’s disappearance.

“‘Why are you so interested?’” Lewis recalled Petschek asking. “‘She was just a throw away,’ he said.”

To read what Petschek said happened the day Root disappeared, see Sunday’s Journal.

Jenifer Gee can be reached at jeniferg@goldcountrymedia.com.

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If you or anyone you know has information regarding Alma “Violet” Root’s disappearance, contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children at (800) 843-5678 or call the Placer County Sheriff’s Office missing persons unit at (530) 889-7800.

Root was last seen Jan. 1, 1980 in the Auburn area. She was born Feb. 8, 1965 and is a white female with brown hair and brown eyes. She is about 5 feet 4 inches tall and is estimated to weigh about 130 pounds.

She may be traveling with a companion and has a blue heart tattoo on her chest.

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