A developing story at 5:00, the BCA has issued an Amber Alert for a 5-year-old girl from Watkins. This is Alaina Ertle, and she was last seen at her house at 2:00 in the morning. According to investigators, family say they noticed her missing about 8:00 this morning. On the morning of August 26th, 2016, Kayla and Matt Ertle woke up in Watkins, Minnesota, and their 5-year-old daughter was not in her bed. The house was empty.
Matt’s truck was gone, and so was Zachary Anderson, the family friend who had slept over the night before, the same man Matt worked with and played softball with, someone Alaina knew by name. Nobody had a motive. Nobody had an explanation. There was no history, no warning, nothing in Zachary Anderson’s public record that pointed to any of this.
Deputies traced the truck to a family cabin in Motley, 90 miles north of Watkins. They found it hidden in a ravine on the property. Inside the cabin, they found a firearm, ammunition, and a handwritten note, but they had not found Alaina. What happened when a trained police K9 led a deputy into the swamp behind that cabin, and what Zachary Anderson said when officers found him standing knee-deep in the water, is what this documentary is building toward.
Drop a comment telling us where you are watching from. Subscribe to the channel now and hit the bell. Stay until the end. Watkins, Minnesota, sits in Meeker County, roughly 60 miles west of Minneapolis. A community of about 1,000 people, the kind of place where neighbors know each other by name. Children are outside after school without anyone tracking their every move, and a trip to the local tavern after a summer softball game is as ordinary as any weeknight gets.
In July 2016, just weeks before the events of this case, a tornado swept through Watkins. 25 homes were damaged. 12 of them received major structural damage. Five businesses were affected. In the days after, people came out to help each other clean up and rebuild, not because it was easy, but because that is what a community of a thousand people does when something comes through and tears things apart.
By mid-August, they were still putting things back together. One of the families living in the center of that community was the Erdahl family and Kayla and their 5-year-old daughter, Alaina. She loved pink and purple. She loved dressing up. She loved getting outside with her dad and playing in the mud.
And she was never without a hug for whoever was nearby. Her mother said she was a friend to everybody. If she missed a day of school, the people around her felt it immediately. She was fearless. She had climbed onto the shed roof to help her dad fix it. She ran toward whatever came next. Her sixth birthday was 2 months away. It was supposed to fall on Halloween.
The evening of August 19th, 2016 was completely ordinary. Matt Erdahl and his friend and co-worker, Zachary Anderson, played in the same local softball league. After a game that evening, the two of them went to the Riverside Tavern at 10:30 at night with the rest of the team, a regular thing. The kind of wind-down that follows a summer game in a small Minnesota town.
The bar closed at 1:00 in the morning. Matt and Zachary moved on to Gordy’s bar, a few blocks from the Erdahl house. Around 2:00 in the morning, Kayla brought Alaina up from the living room where she had fallen asleep and tucked her in upstairs with her Elsa blanket, the one she slept with every night without exception.
Matt was back at the house by 2:30. Zachary arrived between 3:30 and 3:45. The two of them talked until 4:00 before going to sleep. It was not unusual for Zachary to stay over. He was a trusted face in the Erdahl household, a regular presence, someone everyone there knew well. No one in that house went to bed with any reason to feel anything was wrong.
That was the last night anything in the Erdahl home was ordinary. At 8:30 in the morning on August 20th, 2016, Kayla and Matt woke up and went to check on Alaina. She was not in her bed. She was not in her room. She was not anywhere in the house. As they searched and the panic grew, two more things became clear.
Matt’s 2002 GMC Sierra was gone from outside. His phone, which had been left in the truck, was also gone. And Zachary Anderson was gone. The Erdtle family called law enforcement at 9:56 in the morning. Officers responded and immediately understood this was not a child who had wandered. A missing five-year-old, a missing adult male, a missing vehicle, it pointed one direction.
At 1:12 in the afternoon, the BCA issued an Amber Alert for Alaina Erdtle. A developing story at 5:00. The BCA has issued an Amber Alert for a five-year-old girl from Watkins. This is Alaina Erdtle and she was last seen at her house at 2:00 in the morning. News of the alert moved through Watkins immediately. People who had been clearing tornado wreckage three weeks earlier were now learning that a child they all knew was missing.
Sheriff Brian Cruise stated that Anderson had no offender history on record and no known motive. Everyone who knew him said the same thing. He was a good person. He had a smile for everyone. Investigators moved on every available lead from the moment the alert went out. Officers canvassed the neighborhood and collected information from anyone who had seen or heard something out of place overnight.
They contacted Zachary’s phone provider to attempt to trace. They were also working to track Matt’s phone, which had left the house with the truck. A sighting came in. Zachary had been seen at a convenience store near Browerville at around 8:30 in the morning. He appeared to be alone. There was no sign of Alaina.
Cell tower data placed Matt’s phone in Todd County at approximately 6:30 in the morning. It pinged in that area again at 9:00 before going silent. The phone had been turned off. Time was running out and investigators had no clear picture of where Alaina was or whether she was safe.
Then, less than an hour after the Amber Alert was issued, the Cass County Sheriff’s Office received a call. It was Zachary Anderson’s father. He told officers he believed his son was connected to the Amber Alert. Earlier that day, Zachary had called him asking whether he could use the family cabin in Motley, approximately 90 miles from Watkins.
The father told investigators they had his full permission to go there and search the property. Deputies were dispatched without delay. Before that cabin was reached, law enforcement and the people of Watkins were still trying to understand who Zachary Anderson was. He was 25 years old. He was Matt Erdal’s co-worker, his teammate in the local softball league, a familiar face in the Erdal household, someone Alaina knew, someone her parents trusted, someone who had never given anyone a reason to look twice. His public record showed nothing
beyond a few minor traffic violations, no offender history of any kind. One man who had grown up with Matt and knew Zachary from the softball league told reporters, “He seemed like a decent person. Everyone liked him. He always had a smile on his face. That is why this is so hard for everyone to process. They trusted him.
Watkins was not dealing with the discovery that a dangerous stranger had slipped into their community undetected. That would have been its own kind of shock. What Watkins was dealing with was something harder than that, the discovery that someone they had known, welcomed, and trusted completely had done something none of them had any frame of reference for.
There were no warning signs anyone had been given to look for. There was no profile that had flagged him. There was just a face they knew and a name they trusted and a morning when he was gone. Stay with this because what investigators found at that cabin and what came out in the months that followed about who Zachary Anderson actually was is what this documentary is building toward.
Not subscribed yet? Do it right now. Drop a comment below. Hit the bell so you do not miss the next case on this channel. When deputies reached the Anderson family property in rural Cass County near Wilderness Park, they did not go straight to the cabin. Something else drew their attention first.
In a ravine on the property, they found Matt Erdel’s 2002 GMC Sierra. The position of the truck in the ravine was consistent with a deliberate attempt to conceal it. It had not been abandoned, it had been hidden. Deputies continued to the cabin and entered. They moved through it room by room. Inside, they found a firearm, a supply of ammunition, and a handwritten note that appeared to reference Zachary’s personal state of mind.
There was no sign of Alaina anywhere in the cabin. The search moved outside. A path from the property led into the wooded area behind the cabin. Deputy William Conner of the Cass County Sheriff’s Office began working with his trained canine partner, Yankee, starting from the location of the hidden truck. Yankee picked up a scent and began pulling Deputy Conner toward the swamp.
At 4:24 in the afternoon, approximately a quarter of a mile from the cabin, Zachary Anderson was found standing knee-deep in water in a swampy area. He had lacerations on his arms. He did not resist when deputies approached and placed him in custody. One of the officers asked him the only question that mattered, “Where is the girl?” Zachary Anderson’s reply was two words, “What girl?” Officers read Zachary Anderson his rights.
Three times he said he did not want to speak with them. They were not looking for a confession in that swamp. They were looking for a 5-year-old girl who had been missing since before sunrise. They told him directly. They did not know if Alaina was still alive. They told him he could help them bring her home to her family. “I don’t know anything,” he said.
For the next several minutes, officers continued asking. They asked whether Alaina was somewhere in that swamp or whether they needed to go somewhere else entirely. Then quietly, he said two words, in the swamp. He asked for a cigarette. Then he led them into the water. He pointed to a location in a southern section of the Wilderness Park Estates where Alaina had been placed under debris.
Approximately 75 feet away, the canine unit independently identified a second location by scent alone, and there in the water was Alaina’s Elsa blanket, the one Kayla had tucked her in with the night before. At 6:02 that evening, Sheriff Brian Cruise made the call. The Amber Alert was canceled. This was no longer a missing child case.
Alaina Ertl had been taken from this world. She was 5 years old. The Wilderness Park community, the people of Watkins, and the state of Minnesota would spend the weeks ahead trying to hold that fact. Zachary Todd Anderson was charged with 19 counts, the most serious charge available under Minnesota law, a charge involving a serious offense against a child under the age of 13, a charge of kidnapping to carry out a felony.
Additional counts related to the handling of the scene. His bail was set at $1 million with conditions or $2 million without. For the people of Watkins, the charges confirmed what the Amber Alert cancellation had already told them. The person who had done this was not a stranger. He had been in their homes, at their games, at their tables.
But as investigators went further into Anderson’s background, something else began to surface, a history that had never appeared on any public record because it had occurred when he was a juvenile. In 2006, when Zachary was 16, he had lived next door to a 31-year-old single mother of two young children. She later told investigators he had left notes on her car, taken items from her garage, and had come to her front door at 1:30 in the morning demanding entry.
In 2007, he removed a window screen and entered her home while she was asleep upstairs with her children. He was charged with first-degree burglary, eventually pleaded to a lesser charge as a juvenile, and was ordered to complete community service and have no contact with her. She was so afraid of him, she moved.
Because he was a minor at the time, none of it was part of his accessible public record. When news of his arrest reached her, she said, “I felt sick. I felt shocked and sad.” Anderson entered a plea of not guilty to all 19 charges. His public defender immediately moved to suppress key evidence, arguing that Anderson had invoked his right to remain silent three times before officers continued questioning him in the swamp.
Cass County District Judge Jana Austad agreed. His verbal statements, including the words in the swamp and the act of leading officers to the location, were obtained after he had already asserted his rights and could not be used at trial. The defense also moved to dismiss the entire indictment, arguing there was insufficient probable cause.
Judge Austad denied that motion. The 19 count stood. The court ruled the following could not be used. The statements made in the swamp and the act of pointing to where Alena was. The court ruled the following could be used. The clothing and blanket recovered at the scene. All physical evidence gathered there.
All photographs taken during the recovery. Prosecutors maintained that Alena would have been found regardless of what Anderson said in that swamp. The K9 unit had independently tracked to the same location, and a full aerial and ground search was already underway. The evidence the defense sought to exclude was available through means entirely independent of his statements.
The case moved toward trial with a reduced but substantial evidentiary record, and a 19 count indictment that had survived every motion filed against it. The trial never took place. Zachary Anderson entered a guilty plea to the most serious charge, first degree, with findings related to the offense committed against Alaina, and the remaining 18 counts were dropped as part of the agreement.
Immediately after the plea was entered, Judge Jana Austad sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. No separate hearing, no future parole board, no release date of any kind. Cass County Attorney Benjamin Lindstrom said, “Our goal was the maximum sentence available under Minnesota law, life in prison without release.
That is exactly what this plea accomplished.” Alaina’s family did not speak in the courtroom that day. They had been at the center of a case the entire state had followed since the Amber Alert went out in August, and the legal chapter was now closed in a single moment. Zachary Anderson was 25 years old at the time of his arrest.
He had no public record. He had a smile for everyone he met. He had been trusted inside the home of a family with a 5-year-old girl who slept under an Elsa blanket every night. He would spend the rest of his life inside a Minnesota correctional facility. His first parole eligibility date would never come because there was none.
The sentence was exactly what the Ertel family and the people of Watkins had needed to hear. Two months after Alaina was taken from this world, it would have been her sixth birthday, October 31st, Halloween, a day that had always suited her. Her mother, Kayla, decided to do something with that day.
She hosted a gathering in Alaina’s name, and what grew from it became something larger than anyone had originally intended. An organization called Sharing Alaina’s Love was established to direct funds toward other families in the community who were facing hardship of their own. The first beneficiary was a family whose daughter was fighting a rare form of cancer.
Children showed up to help prepare for the event. People came from across the area. Kayla said she wanted to keep showing people who Alaina was and the happiness she brought. That was the whole point. Kayla had told Alaina once that sunsets were people watching from above. After August 20th, 2016, she looked for her daughter in every sunset.
In July of that same year, a tornado had come through Watkins. Houses were damaged. Sections of the town had to be cleared and rebuilt and people came out to help each other. Not because the work was easy, but because when something is taken from a community, the only answer that holds up over time is to show up for each other.
The same thing happened after Alaina. The vigils filled the St. Anthony Catholic Church parking lot. The GoFundMe reached $15,000 in 15 hours. People who had never met the Ertel family stood in that parking lot because they could not think of anywhere else to be. Alaina Ertel was 5 years old. She had a hug for everyone she met.
She loved her Elsa blanket and she was supposed to turn 6 on Halloween. Subscribe to the channel and drop a comment telling us where you are watching from. We will see you in the next one.
The Case That Made Police Physically Sick | True Crime Documentary – YouTube
Transcripts:
A developing story at 5:00, the BCA has issued an Amber Alert for a 5-year-old girl from Watkins. This is Alaina Ertle, and she was last seen at her house at 2:00 in the morning. According to investigators, family say they noticed her missing about 8:00 this morning. On the morning of August 26th, 2016, Kayla and Matt Ertle woke up in Watkins, Minnesota, and their 5-year-old daughter was not in her bed. The house was empty.
Matt’s truck was gone, and so was Zachary Anderson, the family friend who had slept over the night before, the same man Matt worked with and played softball with, someone Alaina knew by name. Nobody had a motive. Nobody had an explanation. There was no history, no warning, nothing in Zachary Anderson’s public record that pointed to any of this.
Deputies traced the truck to a family cabin in Motley, 90 miles north of Watkins. They found it hidden in a ravine on the property. Inside the cabin, they found a firearm, ammunition, and a handwritten note, but they had not found Alaina. What happened when a trained police K9 led a deputy into the swamp behind that cabin, and what Zachary Anderson said when officers found him standing knee-deep in the water, is what this documentary is building toward.
Drop a comment telling us where you are watching from. Subscribe to the channel now and hit the bell. Stay until the end. Watkins, Minnesota, sits in Meeker County, roughly 60 miles west of Minneapolis. A community of about 1,000 people, the kind of place where neighbors know each other by name. Children are outside after school without anyone tracking their every move, and a trip to the local tavern after a summer softball game is as ordinary as any weeknight gets.
In July 2016, just weeks before the events of this case, a tornado swept through Watkins. 25 homes were damaged. 12 of them received major structural damage. Five businesses were affected. In the days after, people came out to help each other clean up and rebuild, not because it was easy, but because that is what a community of a thousand people does when something comes through and tears things apart.
By mid-August, they were still putting things back together. One of the families living in the center of that community was the Erdahl family and Kayla and their 5-year-old daughter, Alaina. She loved pink and purple. She loved dressing up. She loved getting outside with her dad and playing in the mud.
And she was never without a hug for whoever was nearby. Her mother said she was a friend to everybody. If she missed a day of school, the people around her felt it immediately. She was fearless. She had climbed onto the shed roof to help her dad fix it. She ran toward whatever came next. Her sixth birthday was 2 months away. It was supposed to fall on Halloween.
The evening of August 19th, 2016 was completely ordinary. Matt Erdahl and his friend and co-worker, Zachary Anderson, played in the same local softball league. After a game that evening, the two of them went to the Riverside Tavern at 10:30 at night with the rest of the team, a regular thing. The kind of wind-down that follows a summer game in a small Minnesota town.
The bar closed at 1:00 in the morning. Matt and Zachary moved on to Gordy’s bar, a few blocks from the Erdahl house. Around 2:00 in the morning, Kayla brought Alaina up from the living room where she had fallen asleep and tucked her in upstairs with her Elsa blanket, the one she slept with every night without exception.
Matt was back at the house by 2:30. Zachary arrived between 3:30 and 3:45. The two of them talked until 4:00 before going to sleep. It was not unusual for Zachary to stay over. He was a trusted face in the Erdahl household, a regular presence, someone everyone there knew well. No one in that house went to bed with any reason to feel anything was wrong.
That was the last night anything in the Erdahl home was ordinary. At 8:30 in the morning on August 20th, 2016, Kayla and Matt woke up and went to check on Alaina. She was not in her bed. She was not in her room. She was not anywhere in the house. As they searched and the panic grew, two more things became clear.
Matt’s 2002 GMC Sierra was gone from outside. His phone, which had been left in the truck, was also gone. And Zachary Anderson was gone. The Erdtle family called law enforcement at 9:56 in the morning. Officers responded and immediately understood this was not a child who had wandered. A missing five-year-old, a missing adult male, a missing vehicle, it pointed one direction.
At 1:12 in the afternoon, the BCA issued an Amber Alert for Alaina Erdtle. A developing story at 5:00. The BCA has issued an Amber Alert for a five-year-old girl from Watkins. This is Alaina Erdtle and she was last seen at her house at 2:00 in the morning. News of the alert moved through Watkins immediately. People who had been clearing tornado wreckage three weeks earlier were now learning that a child they all knew was missing.
Sheriff Brian Cruise stated that Anderson had no offender history on record and no known motive. Everyone who knew him said the same thing. He was a good person. He had a smile for everyone. Investigators moved on every available lead from the moment the alert went out. Officers canvassed the neighborhood and collected information from anyone who had seen or heard something out of place overnight.
They contacted Zachary’s phone provider to attempt to trace. They were also working to track Matt’s phone, which had left the house with the truck. A sighting came in. Zachary had been seen at a convenience store near Browerville at around 8:30 in the morning. He appeared to be alone. There was no sign of Alaina.
Cell tower data placed Matt’s phone in Todd County at approximately 6:30 in the morning. It pinged in that area again at 9:00 before going silent. The phone had been turned off. Time was running out and investigators had no clear picture of where Alaina was or whether she was safe.
Then, less than an hour after the Amber Alert was issued, the Cass County Sheriff’s Office received a call. It was Zachary Anderson’s father. He told officers he believed his son was connected to the Amber Alert. Earlier that day, Zachary had called him asking whether he could use the family cabin in Motley, approximately 90 miles from Watkins.
The father told investigators they had his full permission to go there and search the property. Deputies were dispatched without delay. Before that cabin was reached, law enforcement and the people of Watkins were still trying to understand who Zachary Anderson was. He was 25 years old. He was Matt Erdal’s co-worker, his teammate in the local softball league, a familiar face in the Erdal household, someone Alaina knew, someone her parents trusted, someone who had never given anyone a reason to look twice. His public record showed nothing
beyond a few minor traffic violations, no offender history of any kind. One man who had grown up with Matt and knew Zachary from the softball league told reporters, “He seemed like a decent person. Everyone liked him. He always had a smile on his face. That is why this is so hard for everyone to process. They trusted him.
Watkins was not dealing with the discovery that a dangerous stranger had slipped into their community undetected. That would have been its own kind of shock. What Watkins was dealing with was something harder than that, the discovery that someone they had known, welcomed, and trusted completely had done something none of them had any frame of reference for.
There were no warning signs anyone had been given to look for. There was no profile that had flagged him. There was just a face they knew and a name they trusted and a morning when he was gone. Stay with this because what investigators found at that cabin and what came out in the months that followed about who Zachary Anderson actually was is what this documentary is building toward.
Not subscribed yet? Do it right now. Drop a comment below. Hit the bell so you do not miss the next case on this channel. When deputies reached the Anderson family property in rural Cass County near Wilderness Park, they did not go straight to the cabin. Something else drew their attention first.
In a ravine on the property, they found Matt Erdel’s 2002 GMC Sierra. The position of the truck in the ravine was consistent with a deliberate attempt to conceal it. It had not been abandoned, it had been hidden. Deputies continued to the cabin and entered. They moved through it room by room. Inside, they found a firearm, a supply of ammunition, and a handwritten note that appeared to reference Zachary’s personal state of mind.
There was no sign of Alaina anywhere in the cabin. The search moved outside. A path from the property led into the wooded area behind the cabin. Deputy William Conner of the Cass County Sheriff’s Office began working with his trained canine partner, Yankee, starting from the location of the hidden truck. Yankee picked up a scent and began pulling Deputy Conner toward the swamp.
At 4:24 in the afternoon, approximately a quarter of a mile from the cabin, Zachary Anderson was found standing knee-deep in water in a swampy area. He had lacerations on his arms. He did not resist when deputies approached and placed him in custody. One of the officers asked him the only question that mattered, “Where is the girl?” Zachary Anderson’s reply was two words, “What girl?” Officers read Zachary Anderson his rights.
Three times he said he did not want to speak with them. They were not looking for a confession in that swamp. They were looking for a 5-year-old girl who had been missing since before sunrise. They told him directly. They did not know if Alaina was still alive. They told him he could help them bring her home to her family. “I don’t know anything,” he said.
For the next several minutes, officers continued asking. They asked whether Alaina was somewhere in that swamp or whether they needed to go somewhere else entirely. Then quietly, he said two words, in the swamp. He asked for a cigarette. Then he led them into the water. He pointed to a location in a southern section of the Wilderness Park Estates where Alaina had been placed under debris.
Approximately 75 feet away, the canine unit independently identified a second location by scent alone, and there in the water was Alaina’s Elsa blanket, the one Kayla had tucked her in with the night before. At 6:02 that evening, Sheriff Brian Cruise made the call. The Amber Alert was canceled. This was no longer a missing child case.
Alaina Ertl had been taken from this world. She was 5 years old. The Wilderness Park community, the people of Watkins, and the state of Minnesota would spend the weeks ahead trying to hold that fact. Zachary Todd Anderson was charged with 19 counts, the most serious charge available under Minnesota law, a charge involving a serious offense against a child under the age of 13, a charge of kidnapping to carry out a felony.
Additional counts related to the handling of the scene. His bail was set at $1 million with conditions or $2 million without. For the people of Watkins, the charges confirmed what the Amber Alert cancellation had already told them. The person who had done this was not a stranger. He had been in their homes, at their games, at their tables.
But as investigators went further into Anderson’s background, something else began to surface, a history that had never appeared on any public record because it had occurred when he was a juvenile. In 2006, when Zachary was 16, he had lived next door to a 31-year-old single mother of two young children. She later told investigators he had left notes on her car, taken items from her garage, and had come to her front door at 1:30 in the morning demanding entry.
In 2007, he removed a window screen and entered her home while she was asleep upstairs with her children. He was charged with first-degree burglary, eventually pleaded to a lesser charge as a juvenile, and was ordered to complete community service and have no contact with her. She was so afraid of him, she moved.
Because he was a minor at the time, none of it was part of his accessible public record. When news of his arrest reached her, she said, “I felt sick. I felt shocked and sad.” Anderson entered a plea of not guilty to all 19 charges. His public defender immediately moved to suppress key evidence, arguing that Anderson had invoked his right to remain silent three times before officers continued questioning him in the swamp.
Cass County District Judge Jana Austad agreed. His verbal statements, including the words in the swamp and the act of leading officers to the location, were obtained after he had already asserted his rights and could not be used at trial. The defense also moved to dismiss the entire indictment, arguing there was insufficient probable cause.
Judge Austad denied that motion. The 19 count stood. The court ruled the following could not be used. The statements made in the swamp and the act of pointing to where Alena was. The court ruled the following could be used. The clothing and blanket recovered at the scene. All physical evidence gathered there.
All photographs taken during the recovery. Prosecutors maintained that Alena would have been found regardless of what Anderson said in that swamp. The K9 unit had independently tracked to the same location, and a full aerial and ground search was already underway. The evidence the defense sought to exclude was available through means entirely independent of his statements.
The case moved toward trial with a reduced but substantial evidentiary record, and a 19 count indictment that had survived every motion filed against it. The trial never took place. Zachary Anderson entered a guilty plea to the most serious charge, first degree, with findings related to the offense committed against Alaina, and the remaining 18 counts were dropped as part of the agreement.
Immediately after the plea was entered, Judge Jana Austad sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. No separate hearing, no future parole board, no release date of any kind. Cass County Attorney Benjamin Lindstrom said, “Our goal was the maximum sentence available under Minnesota law, life in prison without release.
That is exactly what this plea accomplished.” Alaina’s family did not speak in the courtroom that day. They had been at the center of a case the entire state had followed since the Amber Alert went out in August, and the legal chapter was now closed in a single moment. Zachary Anderson was 25 years old at the time of his arrest.
He had no public record. He had a smile for everyone he met. He had been trusted inside the home of a family with a 5-year-old girl who slept under an Elsa blanket every night. He would spend the rest of his life inside a Minnesota correctional facility. His first parole eligibility date would never come because there was none.
The sentence was exactly what the Ertel family and the people of Watkins had needed to hear. Two months after Alaina was taken from this world, it would have been her sixth birthday, October 31st, Halloween, a day that had always suited her. Her mother, Kayla, decided to do something with that day.
She hosted a gathering in Alaina’s name, and what grew from it became something larger than anyone had originally intended. An organization called Sharing Alaina’s Love was established to direct funds toward other families in the community who were facing hardship of their own. The first beneficiary was a family whose daughter was fighting a rare form of cancer.
Children showed up to help prepare for the event. People came from across the area. Kayla said she wanted to keep showing people who Alaina was and the happiness she brought. That was the whole point. Kayla had told Alaina once that sunsets were people watching from above. After August 20th, 2016, she looked for her daughter in every sunset.
In July of that same year, a tornado had come through Watkins. Houses were damaged. Sections of the town had to be cleared and rebuilt and people came out to help each other. Not because the work was easy, but because when something is taken from a community, the only answer that holds up over time is to show up for each other.
The same thing happened after Alaina. The vigils filled the St. Anthony Catholic Church parking lot. The GoFundMe reached $15,000 in 15 hours. People who had never met the Ertel family stood in that parking lot because they could not think of anywhere else to be. Alaina Ertel was 5 years old. She had a hug for everyone she met.
She loved her Elsa blanket and she was supposed to turn 6 on Halloween. Subscribe to the channel and drop a comment telling us where you are watching from. We will see you in the next one.
