On Thanksgiving Day, a West Gloucester woman named Tina Cavanaugh, after an angry exchange at the dinner table, got up, walked out of her home — and went missing for close to 24 hours in the woods above and off Concord Street.
By the next day, dozens of state and local police personnel, Gloucester firefighters and a crew from the Coast Guard had teamed up for a massive search through West Gloucester's rugged terrain, with West Parish School as a command center. And shortly after 4 p.m. that Friday, Cavanaugh was found alive, alert and generally unhurt.
The search and rescue effort had ended safely and successfully — and that overall story has been voted by Times readers as their choice for the year's top news story in an online poll at gloucestertimes.com.
The readers' choices for the year's top 10 stories are based on voting as of yesterday afternoon — and readers are invited to still make their choices through the gloucestertimes.com poll.
The story of the missing woman and the ensuing search topped the poll with 334 votes as of yesterday, beating out the runnerup story about the success of the Gloucester High football team. Readers voting for the top 10 stories do not rank the stories in a particular order, but merely choose a top 10 from some two dozen nominees. There is also a space where readers can add a story they believe should have been nominated.
While many of the readers' top-10 choices reflect the choices by the Times staff, there are some differences.
For one, the saga of charges filed, then later dropped against Gloucester firefighter Clinton Carroll over his alleged relationship with a then 13-year-old O'Maley Middle School girl drew the seventh-most votes among readers, but did not make the Times staff's top 10. While criminal charges against Carroll have been dropped, he is appealing his firing by the city.
The turnover in Gloucester police and fire chiefs — with Michael Lane and Phil Dench taking over as interim police and fire chiefs, respectively, after Barry McKay and John Beaudette abruptly retired under some fire last spring — was next among readers with 158 votes at No. 8.
Also, the Old Timer's Tavern beating case — in which three city men were charged with and indicted for severely beating a gay Salem man in an alley alongside the Rogers Street bar in April, was the No, 6 choice among readers, yet did not make the Times staff's top 10.
Other top stories chosen through the readers' poll were also among the top stories chosen by the Times staff, though in different order. Those included the Eastern Avenue house explosion, the sinking of the fishing vessel Patriot, the boil-water crisis, regulatory changes in the fishing industry, the debate over the Gloucester charter school, the opening of Gloucester Crossing, and the filming of the Adam Sandler movie "Grown Ups" in Essex.
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