For decades, Sue and Mark Baker have shown the Fredericksburg area the meaning of strength.
And now the Stafford County couple is teaching us about charity, as well.
I worked with Sue at The Free Lance-Star several years ago. We didn’t talk a lot — I was in the newsroom then, and she was in newspaper circulation — but I could always count on her for a smile and a hello as we passed each other in the halls in the building downtown where The Publisher hotel now sits.
I knew Sue had lost her daughter, Amy, but that’s not something you usually bring up in quick, polite, daily conversation, right?
The details are that Amy was violently taken away from her family in 1989 when she was only 18 years old. I can’t even imagine such a horror. My son is already 19, and he still seems so young.
Amy was abducted and killed in Fairfax County on March 29, 1989, and, for years, Sue and Mark stood strong as investigators worked the case. A reward fund of $25,000 was established for relevant information, too.
But the case grew cold, as sometimes happens. Justice wasn’t swift this time, but it did eventually come.
Authorities eventually connected Amy’s slaying to the murder of Jacqueline Lard in North Stafford in 1986 via DNA evidence.
Stafford resident Elroy Harrison was convicted in the Lard case last year and was given three life sentences plus 40 years in prison. He hasn’t been charged in Fairfax for Amy’s murder, but the Bakers take solace in the fact that he was apprehended.
“We never thought they would find him,” Sue told me recently, as we chatted in the kitchen of the Bakers’ southern Stafford home.
The Bakers also praised the law-enforcement officials who worked on the two cases linked to Harrison, especially those with the Stafford Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff David Decatur and now-Maj. Steven Carey visited the couple in 2024 — on what would have been Amy’s 53rd birthday — with a cake and well wishes after Harrison had been arrested. Then, Stafford personnel comforted the Bakers during the Lard trial.
“They more or less, even though it wasn’t — the trial we went to wasn’t for our daughter — but they took us under their wing and treated us just so good,” Mark said.
To give back, then, and also to honor Amy, the Bakers last month donated what was left of the original reward fund to the Stafford County Animal Shelter. Money from the fund had been used for other memorials over the years, but the recent gift was still sizable: $5,525.
“There was no doubt in my mind Amy would have loved what happened to that money,” Sue said. “Amy would have had every animal in the world if she could have.”
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, they say, and right as we were talking about this, a squirrel Sue feeds came to the side door, looking for peanuts.
Sue obliged, and Simone the squirrel was satisfied.
I had to ask about the name.
“Simone, just like the gymnast,” Sue said, referring to Simone Biles. “She hangs upside down from that bird feeder right there when she wants to really irritate Mark. That’s a regular thing.”
When I spent time with the Bakers, it was a little like old-home week. We talked about co-workers we had in common, and I told them about how my dad used to feed the squirrels behind my parents’ house in Roanoke.
Looking back on the conversation now, though, I am astounded at the strength they exude despite what they’ve endured. If anything happened to my only child, I’m fairly certain I would be a shambles — forever.
And that’s not even getting into their recent generosity. It will benefit Stafford — and the county’s animals — for a good long time.
But not necessarily Simone. Sue started taking care of her a long time ago, I think.
