In an episode straight from a potboiler, a Nebraska school teacher and a 13-year-old student are believed to have eloped and the police are looking for them all over for nearly a week now.
She was a sixth-grade math teacher, following in the footsteps of her father, Tim, a teacher at nearby Gothenburg. Her career path had been set as a member of the Future Educators of America while a student at Lexington High.
But leaving her career plans in a wreck, the 25-year-student Kelsey Peterson has fled with the 13-year-old Fernando Rodriguez. School officials had recently learned of a suspected "intimate relationship'' between them.
The duo went missing the very day, Oct. 25, school officials placed Peterson on paid administrative leave and confiscated her school-issued laptop computer.
They notified police when they found several letters and e-mails written by Peterson, a single parent, to the boy, stating that she loved him and that he was "the only person'' that she would ever love again.
The teacher and the boy apparently fled in Peterson's white Pontiac.
They reportedly were spotted Friday night at a Denver convenience store and then at an undisclosed location in Ogallala, Nebraska.
Peterson was being sought on charges of kidnapping and child abuse, both felonies, and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a misdemeanor.
Around Lexington, a meatpacking town of 11,500 that is majority Hispanic, people expressed shock that a popular teacher would go on the run with a student almost half her age.