It was the early 1980s and south-central Wyoming was winding down from an energy boom but was still attracting workers from all over the country and state with the promise of big money.

Among those drawn to the Rawlins area was 18-year-old Naomi Lee Kidder, who had left home three hours north in Buffalo, Wyoming, with friends to work on a seismograph crew in the oil field.

A young mother at the time, Kidder left behind her young daughter with her parents at their Buffalo home and was staying with friends in a Rawlins motel. She’d just been there for about a week when she got homesick, according to her sister, Trish Sealey, and wanted to go home to her daughter.

Without a ride, Kidder hatched a plan to hitch the 228 miles home to Buffalo and left Rawlins on Tuesday, June 29, 1982.

She n

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