The Boston Globe

July 12, 1996, Friday, City Edition

Investment firm shuts to help find girl; 50 employees fly to NYC in search for teen-ager

By Shirley Leung, Globe Staff

When Bain Capital Inc. executives learned the 14-year-old daughter of

a business partner was missing, they responded by closing the Boston

company's office and flew about 50 employees to New York City to look

for the girl themselves.

Yesterday, in their first day of searching, they pounded the pavement,

plastered the city with 200,000 fliers and quizzed teen-agers at

concerts and parks.

But as of late last night, Melissa Gay was still nowhere to be found.

"Our children are what life is all about," said W. Mitt Romney,

founder and managing partner of Bain Capital. "Everything else takes a

back seat."

Bob Gay, one of 12 managing directors of Bain Capital, last saw his

daughter Saturday. The family lives in Ridgefield, Conn., and Melissa

had been dropped off at the local tennis club around 3:30 that

afternoon.

When her mother, Lynette, called the club around 6 p.m. to see if

Melissa had finished playing, club staff said she wasn't there.

Lynette and Bob Gay assumed their daughter had grabbed a bite to eat

with her tennis partner.

Bob Gay waited until 2 that night. His daughter never came home.

"That's when we knew something was not right," he said in a telephone

interview last night from New York City.

They called all her friends and then called police. They soon learned

that Melissa had hopped a train with several friends to New York

Saturday night to catch the Rock Rave-Fantasia II concert in

Manhattan.

Her friends returned to Connecticut without Melissa sometime Sunday.

Bob Gay doesn't believe his daughter ran away, because she didn't take

any clothes and had only $ 10 with her. "I believe she fully intended

to go to the concert without telling us, but not stay there in the

city," he said.

Ridgefield and New York police are working together. Hospitals have

been checked and arrest records canvassed, Gay has been told.

New York police said her friends last saw her at a party at 11 a.m.

Sunday near the Whitestone Bridge, which connects Queens and the

Bronx.

Last night, officials from both departments would not comment on the

case, except to say that the investigation is continuing.

But Bob Gay just couldn't sit back and watch.

On Wednesday he walked the streets of Manhattan looking for his blonde

daughter, who was last seen wearing a blue or red-striped shirt and

baggy tan pants.

Gay, who has worked for Bain for eight years, kept his ordeal to

himself, confiding only in Romney.

But Wednesday, Romney decided to tell the other 11 managing directors,

and they decided that finding a missing daughter was more important

than operating a $ 1 billion investment firm.

The executives decided not only to give their time but their money,

paying all expenses for the search for the fifth of Gay's seven

children.

That night, 16 employees flew to New York, turned a function room of

the Laguardia Marriott Hotel into a "war room," and got printing giant

R. R. Donnelly to print 200,000 fliers with a color picture of

Melissa. They also hired a private investigator and set up an

800-number hot line.

Another 40 employees caught an early morning shuttle yesterday, and

later were joined by about 250 colleagues from other Wall Street

firms, including Goldman Sachs, Price Waterhouse and Bankers Trust.

"Most of us have children," said Stephen Pagliuca, 44, a Bain managing

director with four children. "That's the most important thing in our

lives. It wasn't even a question. We just decided to do it."

Anyone with information on Melissa Gay can call 1-800-783-7454, extension 1111.

The Boston Globe

December 8, 1996, Sunday, City Edition

Bain Capital recalls NY search

BYLINE: By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff

Last week, the partners of Boston's Bain Capital Inc. drew up their

annual list of accomplishments: Number one was the week they spent

last July combing Manhattan in search of Melissa Gay, the missing

14-year-old daughter of one of the partners.

"It really overshadowed everything we did from a money standpoint,"

said Mitt Romney, the Bain Capital founder who won the 1994

Massachusetts Republican Senate nomination partly on his reputation as

a venture capital wiz. "The days and nights spent looking for Missy

Gay were more valuable than some financial home runs that made the

front page of the Wall Street Journal. I mean, money is just money."

The 15 Bain Capital partners chartered a plane to New York to search

for the missing youngster among the thousands of abandoned children

and runaways who congregate in Manhattan.

They didn't find her themselves. She turned up in Montville, N.J. The

Associated Press reported at the time that she was dazed from a

disorienting dose of a drug taken at a rock concert.

Now back in school and fully recovered, Melissa and her parents are

doing well, Romney said.

The partners, however, are still taking stock of their visit to the

dark corners of New York, putting up posters and talking to runaways

outside seedy nightclubs and peep shows. Romney said he can't escape

some of the images he carries with him from his week in the New York

underworld.

"It was a shocker," he said. "The number of lost souls was astounding."

Romney said one partner still talks about a runaway he spoke with in

search of information about Melissa.

"The girl asked, 'Why are you looking for her?' and he said, 'Because

her parents miss her,' " Romney said. "She replied, 'I wish my parents

missed me like that.' "