Drive@ 5 8-5-2026

Yellow van. The Yellow van. The Drive at 5. The stories driving today's headlines. Brought to you by Servicemaster of Greater Pittsburgh. When disaster strikes, demand the yellow van. On 100.1 FM and AM 1020, KDKA. All right, here we go. 8663, 9, 10, 20 is that number. I started the show with this way, way, way, way, way back long ago. And I want to dive into it because I'm a little bit skeptical. I think it's great reporting by Paul Alexander. It just, it is. But I'm skeptical of the messaging and maybe twisting. sort of the narrative, not by Paul, but by the people that he's talking to. And I want to see real advancement. I'm kind of tired of the words. And I hate to be harsh about that. It's just the reality of it. And the story I'm talking about is this one. Renowned investigator Steve Ridge tells K-K radio that there is a sense of optimism to find out who was responsible for the disappearance of Sherry Mahan, who went missing February 22nd, 1985. He says the recent interviews have provided what appears to be very useful information. We've been running that down every since through multiple sources and multiple interviews, and it seems as though it's finally coming together. Well, authorities have a named a suspect or a person of interest. Rich says they're very optimistic. They are definitely on to something substantial. Paul Alexander, News Radio, KDCA. All right, here we go. Cherry Mayhan. So when I say that name and you're of a certain age, around my age or so, it resonates. It may scare you. It may make you sit up and think. It may terrify you. It may make you go, oh, and then you move on. But it definitely elicits a reaction if you're right around my age. February 25, 1985, 8-year-old girl, Cabot Butler County, Corn Planner Road. I think I got all that right. She went missing. And it shook us to the core. I talk about this every once in a while on this show because if you're around my age, maybe even a little older, you definitely remember this. You ran home from school because you were told to. You traveled in packs because you were told to. We didn't have 24-hour news at that point. We had 2-4 and 11. We had the newspapers, double, Post-Gazette, and Press. And they told us, don't screw around. A girl's missing. There's a skier on the side of a van, a big painting of a skier on the side of a van. If you see that call right away, your local police. We're told that there is a monster in our midst that kidnapped this girl in Butler County, which this is before, remember, it was East Ohio Street. It wasn't. you know, an expressway on 28. It was not 279. It was a little longer to get places. So Butler County, while it was kind of a suburb of Pittsburgh, it really was kind of out there, out there. And while it was kind of out there, it was still close enough to where you go, well, this is close to home. And it shook you to the core. And now we're over 40 years after this. Last year was the 40th anniversary.

But to people of my age, it still shakes you. And here's the part that's interesting to me. I don't know, what was it? Six months ago, eight months ago. You heard about them digging up a plot of land up in the kind of the northeast stretches of Allegheny County. Freeport area over there by the Mills Mall. Not Freeport, but like the Mills Mall area. Frazier maybe. And they think they found something. And that turned out to be nothing. You heard about various different times where there was a guy in jail. And yeah, that's the key. That's the key to the whole Sherry Mayhan situation. We're going to talk to him. He was part of like some biker gang. He may have been charged with other crimes in the past. This is the guy. This is the guy. And it's all going to come out. You heard different private investigators over the years talk about this, right? And now you got this guy, Steve Ridge, renowned investigator. And he says a recent tip has led several to several interviews, and he's optimistic that they're getting much closer to the answers they're looking for because they're hot on this trail. Authorities, though, haven't named a suspect or person of interest. But Ridge says they're very optimistic. They're definitely on to something substantial. Now, at some point, somebody like me, and maybe I'm saying things that other people are thinking and aren't going to say. At some point I start wondering if it's self-serving for the people who are keeping their name in it. He might be as honest as the day is long. I don't know. And I might be the worst kind of skeptic on this earth. But this is something that resonated with so many of us. And we've been told time and time again, now what, five, six times? Hey, we're close. Hey, we're close. Hey, we're close. And he might be. But I think it's very fair to ask the question, okay, the guy who keeps getting paid attention to is this world-renowned investigator Steve Ridge and people like him. So show me the proof at some point instead of just talking about it. Because this is something that captivated us, stayed with us, scared the heck out of us. You don't owe us anything. You don't. But you're the one offering this information. Hey, we're close, we're close, we're close. Okay, all right. Yeah, I've heard that before. Hey, we're close, we're close. All right. Well, at what point are you going to hand it over? What are you close about? How close are you? What's the proof? And again, you don't owe it to us, but you're dangling a carrot. And the part where skepticism comes in for me is, That carrot that you dangle, every time that you tell us you're dangling it, a bunch of eyeballs go toward you. I'm not trying to make this investigator out to be a bad guy. But he's the only guy and people like him who attention keeps getting paid to. And we're almost forgetting at some point that there's most likely, I mean, she was confirmed legally dead in 1998, that there's most likely a dead girl. Okay, where's the meat? Where's the yields? You keep throwing this fishing line in the water and telling us, you're getting bites, you're getting bites, you're getting bites, you're getting bites. Well, we're going to, at least I'm not going to say were. I'm going to stop believing it until you reel that fish in at some point. And we're getting pretty close. There's a whole lot of crying wolf that seems to happening. I don't want to sully the name of a good person or people. I don't.

But this charade has been going on every six months or so for the past couple years. And the skeptic in me is going, the only person who's getting attention paid to them is the person who's telling us to pay attention to me. And at some point, you got to show us the yields. Or maybe we just turn a deaf ear to you. So this Sherry Mayhan thing, again, we're back in that cycle of, I promise it's coming. We're close. I promise there's something new where it might be in their best interest to not say anything until they really have something. From the PJ Fitzpatrick Home Improvement Traffic Center.