A Father Recalls a Day Now Far From Ordinary

It was Feb. 2 when Troy Crites was told his Subaru station wagon, which the girls had been driving, was discovered on rugged terrain beyond a remote utility trail.

Crites found the goodbye letter from his daughter not long after he realized she was missing. It was on the desk, in her diary, on a page dated Jan. 19. She wrote of Rachel Smith, referring to her by her widely used nickname, Pi, the mathematical term.

"Wherever I end up laying, whether buried or cremated, I want to stay with my true love, Pi, buried next to her," the letter said. "This is my choice. I'm sorry."

Some of this diary entry was made public the week the teens vanished, setting off a quiet public debate among friends and strangers about whether the Rachels had a romantic relationship that their families did not condone.

Crites said this is not so: "A. It doesn't make any difference. B. There's no real evidence at all. . . . They were just two teenagers who did everything together. Is that all that uncommon?"

Despite the wording of the letter, he said, "true love and sexuality are not the same things."

Rachel Smith was a junior at Wootton High School, and Rachel Crites had started attending classes at Montgomery College. But her father said his daughter was always " a little young for her age"; some days, he said, she returned to Wootton and sat through a class or two with her friend.

Both girls loved animals. Crites worked at PetSmart, and Smith worked at Potomac Kennels in Gaithersburg, where fellow employee Tracy Payne recalled her as responsible and in love with American Eskimo dogs.

Often, Rachel Crites drove her friend to work. Sometimes she stayed to play with the puppies, Payne said.

Rachel Smith "was so outgoing, and she never seemed like she had any problems," Payne said. "She was always smiling and always happy, and so was her friend."

Both families had supported the friendship. Rachel Crites once went with Rachel Smith on a family visit to New York, and Rachel Smith recently joined her friend and her mother, in from Italy, on a weeklong visit with relatives in Pennsylvania.

"I think Rachel and Pi had what they considered an undying friendship -- true friends forever," Cornelius said. "Pi had helped Rachel, and they had grown close."