When Laurel 'Came Back' to Us

Laurel was born such a perfect baby that Elizabeth and Dave Gates considered her a gift. Born January 16, 2002, the third of three girls, baby Laurel came home from the hospital on Elizabeth's birthday. Smiling when she was only a few days old and sprouting curly blonde hair in the first few months, Laurel was the kind of kid people stop and fuss over while Christmas shopping at the mall.

With such a perfect beginning, it seemed quite odd, a few months later, for Laurel's great-aunt to mysteriously proclaim from her deathbed, "Tell Elizabeth her baby will be all right!" At the time, no one could know Laurel faced any danger. But in the winter of 2004, the meaning of her great-aunt's words were revealed when Elizabeth returned to her childhood home in Modesto, California, bringing potted plants to help her children celebrate her grandmother's seventy-fifth birthday.

After a waffle breakfast, the family adjourned to the front yard, where the adults worked at transplanting the potted plants while Laurel and her sisters played nearby, running in and out of the house. "My last recollection of Laurel," said Elizabeth, "was when I called her back from the end of the driveway; she's wandered too close to the street. I told her, 'Good job, you came back!'"

But as quickly as Elizabeth returned to her plants, Laurel was gone again. The second disappearance prompted Elizabeth to begin asking those questions no preschooler's parent likes to ask.

"Who's seen Laurel? We need to find her," Elizabeth said. The search escalated quickly into some dramatic mental pictures. "I thought, She may be dead. I know that's dramatic, but after a few minutes, that's what I'd already begun thinking. I ran through the house and into the backyard, where I suddenly remembered the backyard pond."

Elizabeth's eyes shot toward the pond, and there she saw something "my mind wasn't letting me see," she said. She wanted it to be a giant lily pad or a discarded bucket, but it wasn't.

It was Laurel, floating facedown in the water.

Elizabeth remembers "grabbing Laurel by the back of her pants, but she was completely limp, like a cold fish. Her eyes were rolled back slightly, and her tongue hung out of her mouth. I started screaming, "Oh my God, she's already gone!"

As she had done earlier when Laurel had strayed too close to the end of the driveway, Elizabeth urged her daughter, "Laurel, come back! Come back!"

She laid Laurel down to start CPR, and water began to drain from the little girl. As Elizabeth started the CPR she recalled from a class she'd taken nine years earlier, Laurel's grandmother called 911.

Following the ambulance to the hospital, Elizabeth frantically called her airline pilot husband, Dave, sobbing out the words, "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!"

Continued on page 2: Asking God for a miracle... »