David McVicker grew up in Orange County, California, and was 14 years old in 1975.

Back then it was a lot different than it is now.

We used to hitchhike as our mode of transportation.

I started doing it when I was about nine years old.

It was the way that I got around.

There wasn't buses.

Everybody did it.

Any given day you can see hundreds of kids hitchhiking to the beach.

So it was a pretty normal thing.

I was never afraid to hitchhike because nothing bad had ever happened.

It was always in good fun.

And sometimes we would do it on Saturday afternoons just to go up and down the beach and meet people.

It was a way to party and have fun and get to where you were going.

I never had a problem until this happened.

On September 8th, 1975, David was leaving a friend's house and was making his way home.

It was the last day of summer. The next day was going to be my first day at high school.

So I spent the day hanging out with my friends in Garden Grove until it came time for me to go home about 5 o'clock in the evening.

I was going to go hitchhike home so I walked across the street from his house

there was a McDonald's and I was just going to walk up to the next light and go down to Huntington Beach.

As soon as I walked across the street, a blue car pulled up next to me.

And there was this guy and he had a big smile on his face, long brown hair, blue jeans,

kind of grunged looking just like everyone else back then and he asked me for

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