Thursday's Internet Edition, March 11, 2010.

Vikkie Hart (above) says her daughter Christian Starcher Seabolt, shown at left in a photo from elementary school, had dreams of becoming a singer and performer. Photo by David Hedges

They’ve seen the photograph — on posters and in the newspaper — of the girl who stepped out of her mother’s apartment on a summer night to get a pack of cigarettes and never returned.

But her mother says there’s a lot more to Christian Starcher Seabolt than that.

“She was unique in every way,” Vikki Hart said of her daughter, who would have turned 26 next month.

In fact, Christian was different from the start, Hart says.

She wasn’t due until April, but Christian came into the world on Feb. 29, 1984 — Leap Day, the most rare day in the calendar.

Her mother recalls that at the age of two she could sing every word of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” and accompany herself on her toy piano, even though she had never been taught a note of music.

She had a talent for performing, and served as ringmaster for the annual kindergarten circus at what was then Spencer Primary Center.

She did a lot of the typical things growing up. She was in Brownies, a majorette troupe, and played on softball teams.

She was baptized in the Pentecostal church and regularly attended services while growing up.

In those ways, she was like a lot of other kids. But there was still something different.

“When she came into a room, she brightened it up,” her mother said. “Everybody who knew her liked her.”

“She even dressed in a unique way, with lots of bright colors,” she said.

She also wrote poetry, including a poem titled, “A Person I Once Knew,” about a teenage cousin killed in a car wreck. A teacher submitted the poem to a young writer’s contest. It was published along with the other winners.

Her family says Christian was a talented singer and musician who loved to perform wherever there was an audience. As a teenager, she accompanied her mother to the local bars, not to drink, but for a chance to get up on stage with the bands that were performing there.

“She was too young to drink,” her mother said. “But all the bars wanted her there. People loved to hear her play and sing.”

Her daughter’s dream was to form a band and go on the road to perform.

“That’s a dream for a lot of people,” her mother said. “But this girl was different. She would have made it.

“Whoever took her life,” she said, “took her from everyone.

“And whoever killed her didn’t just hurt her. They hurt a lot of people,” Hart said, ticking off the relatives who have missed her the last seven years and now grieve her loss.

“She was an innocent child that someone murdered,” her mother said. “She was naive and I guess she got in with the wrong people.”

Even after seven years, her mother continued to hold out hope that she was still alive.

“I thought maybe she could have been in the witness protection program or something,” she said.

That hope ended a few days ago when police told Hart, now 42, that the remains found in a remote corner of Wirt County last month were her daughter’s.

“Seven years of not knowing where your child is, is the hardest thing a mother will ever go through,” Hart said. “I wanted her back, but not like this.”

Hart said she has had to endure rumors and stories including that her daughter was fed to the hogs, or ground up and eaten by her killers.

Now she knows those tales were untrue, but she said people still need to know the real person her daughter was.

“She was a good person that needs to be remembered and mourned like anyone else,” she said.

Christian’s dreams of fame were cut short when she disappeared Aug. 31, 2002. Now she’s remembered as the face on posters and in the newspaper.

“My daughter wanted to be famous, but not this way,” Hart said. “She got famous, that’s for sure. But it wasn’t the kind of fame she intended.”