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Husband remains ‘hopeful’ wife will return

Missing woman’s family talks about case Wednesday on national TV.

$Tiffany \uFEFFTehan, here\uFEFF with her 1-year-old daughter, Alexis\uFEFF, was reported missing on Saturday, April 17. Contributed photo$

Contributed photo Tiffany \uFEFFTehan, here\uFEFF with her 1-year-old daughter, Alexis\uFEFF, was reported missing on Saturday, April 17. Contributed photo

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By Kelli Wynn, Staff Writer Updated 8:45 AM Thursday, April 22, 2010

BEAVERCREEK — Nestled in her father’s arms, 1-year-old Alexis Tehan reached for the cap on the plastic water bottle her father held in his hand.

Drool slowly made its way to her shirt as her father tried to sit the bottle on top of a table inside Patterson Park Church, 3655 E. Patterson Road.

When told that Alexis looks just like him, David Tehan, 31, of Xenia, said: “She looks just like her mother, too.”

Alexis’ mother, Tiffany Tehan, 31, of Xenia, has been missing for five days. With no knowledge of the young mother’s whereabouts, David Tehan, his in-laws and Xenia police Capt. Scott Anger agreed to be interviewed for most of the national networks’ morning news shows Wednesday, April 21, at the church.

Prior to the interviews, Tehan’s family learned that police obtained surveillance camera footage from a Belmont Circle K convenience store that showed Tiffany with a man named Tre B. Hutcherson, 42, of Dayton prior to her disappearance on April 17.

Joe Godwin, one of the pastors at the church, believes it was the distribution of fliers that described Tehan’s disappearance that might have led police to the surveillance camera footage of Hutcherson.

The surveillance footage is the best lead the police department has had in the case, Anger said.

“With the recent developments, I do feel very hopeful (of Tiffany’s return),” David Tehan said.

Tehan and his in-laws, Susie and Chuck Tabor, said they had never heard of Hutcherson before news broke late Tuesday about him being a person of interest in her disappearance.

“I have no idea what happened. It was a perfectly normal conversation,” David Tehan told “Good Morning America” reporters as he held his daughter and described his last conversation with his wife April 17. “We had plans that weekend that we were excited about.”

When asked what he would say to his wife, David Tehan said, “We love you. We miss you and we can’t wait to see you again.”

After the last television interview, Tehan and his mother, Diane Tehan, talked about his wife.

“She’s a very vivacious person,” David Tehan said of what attracted him to Tiffany, who he met while they were students at Cedarville University. Their first meeting occurred while they were volunteering with a children’s ministry.

Tiffany Tehan made such an impression on David that he said he would look for her whenever there was a ministry event.

He said it only took him a couple of months to realize that he wanted to marry Tiffany, the daughter of a former pastor and the oldest of three children.

“We were not aware of any problems,” said Tiffany’s father, Chuck Tabor, who now teaches at Southern State Community College in Hillsboro and online for Liberty University.

Tehan, who works for Security National Bank in Springfield, said he doesn’t know if his wife met Hutcherson online, but that both he and his wife liked to use social networking sites.

“If she needs safe passage home, we will provide it,” said Susie Tabor, an employee of NCB Bank. She said that she hoped her daughter would contact a friend if she wasn’t comfortable contacting her family.

The news that her daughter-in-law had been spending time with Hutcherson without her son’s knowledge did not change Diane Tehan’s opinion of Tiffany.

“I’m not questioning her or doubting her,” said Diane Tehan, who is a Bible translator in Thailand. Diane and her husband, Tom, would be in Thailand, but Tom Tehan was teaching at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., when they got the news about Tiffany’s disappearance. “She’s an important part of our family. I don’t want to lose her,” Diane Tehan said.

Later, outside her son’s home in Xenia, Diane Tehan said she had been doing a load of laundry and talking about the situation with her son. “He wants to know where she is,” Diane Tehan said. “He wants her to be OK. He misses her. He wants her in his life. He desperately hopes she’ll want to come back.”

David Tehan said he believes Alexis senses her mother’s absence despite the fact that she’s only 1. “She definitely knows something is not right,” he said.

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