Nicole Schmidt
Appearances
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
I won't watch it. I read the transcript. I won't watch it.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Whatever you can do to make sure my daughter comes home, I'm asking for that help.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
We really had hope. We really did. Because there's a million different scenarios that could play out just the same. Hurt in the wilderness, bad reception, you know, all that stuff.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
She talked to the officer and says, he's going to let me go. It's, you know, it's fine. It was just a big misunderstanding, and that was that. And I didn't have the video, and I didn't talk to the police or anything, and I had to take her word for it. And I'm like, all right, you know, listen, I understand misunderstandings happen, you know, especially when you're in a small, confined space.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
but she showed us the video, like it was an awesome video. I enjoyed it, we all enjoyed it. I couldn't believe she made something like that.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Surfing the sand dunes in Colorado, like that's cool, man, you know?
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Just her body movements and not being close together, stuff like that, you can see the differences. It screams confrontation.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Gabby was a really good person. She really tried to get the best or see the best in people.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Oh, yeah. We did it anyway. I just started calling every hospital and national park I could to see if I could find out where they are. Maybe it's just bad signal.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Were you talking to Brian at this point? Did you reach out to him?
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
We share it to help others. We do it because the more we do it, the more people send us emails. And it's Gabby's story that touched us. Thank you for doing what you do.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
none of them will talk to us i sent a text to roberta and brian and i got no response from either one same i mean i even went as far as i'm going to call the cops and usually when you hear you know someone's going to call the cops you would be like what are you let's see what what's going on here and no the potatoes have no way of knowing that while they are trying to find gabby gabby's van is on the move
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
What didn't make sense is when we couldn't get in touch with her.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
It was always about her first, and we'll figure out the rest.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Brian's home. The van's home. Gabby's nowhere to be found.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
I've never had to contact an attorney when my daughter broke up with somebody.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
If I'm down, Jim will call me up. Tara will sit by my side. Nikki, you know, she'll call us up, and we pick each other up.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
It was hard not to because we would do interviews and they would tell us.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
She was easy in terms of just going with the flow. She was always up for whatever we were going to do. So in that respect, it was easy. Sometimes she'd get in trouble. It didn't happen.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
You said Brian's home, the van's home. Gabby's nowhere to be found.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
We've all said it, you know, we're not naive to the fact that we thought. We really had hope because there's a million different scenarios that could play out just the same. Hurt in the wilderness, bad reception, you know, all that stuff. Maybe they split up and she's just done with him and doesn't want to tell us yet because she's really upset. You really try to rationalize any scenario.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
It's on all of you, everyone that's in this room, to do that. And if you don't do that for other people that are missing, that's a shame.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
it is our belief and we want others to be inspired to share people um and try to be cognitive cognizant of those of those who do not look like you 600 000 people go missing a year half of them are people of color so you know what we have to share everybody meanwhile brian has now been missing for weeks the search going on
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
We were told by the FBI they wanted us to stay in Florida. Jim was like, I'm going to Wyoming. Nikki was in New York at the time, you know, so we were just really in all the locations where we needed to be.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Jim had to make probably the, I mean, it's safe to say the worst phone call you've ever had to make. I don't even know how he made it.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Well, I never liked anyone that wanted to date my daughter. Because no one was really good enough for her, in my opinion.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
He was a liar. Nothing he said in those stories were true. He was a coward to the day that he died.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
So Gabby didn't come up to us and say, he's doing this. It's things that we would notice, again, after the fact. We can see that that pattern was part of that progression that she was in.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
She was over 18. You can't stop them from doing something like that, right?
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
There's so many versions of it. And a lot of people don't even know where to go when they're in it. Knowing what we know now, we see that progression that happened. Alienation of friends and family. Isolation. But it's hard to pick up. But when you get a high-level view, you can see the path that that was leading to. And that's part that is hard for us.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Once everything was done, the FBI asked us what we wanted to do with it, and we contemplated a few things. At the end, we were like, we just don't want the vibe to it. We had the van crushed. No one really knows that, but we did.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Since Brian will never be prosecuted for killing Gabby, the Petitos want someone held responsible.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
The one thing we need more than anything else is don't make it just another cautionary tale. Use her situation and her story as a lesson of what can and should not happen. We've been a part of four law changes since this all happened. Two in Florida, one in Utah, and one nationally. And it's her voice doing it, not us.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Because of her name. She did it, not us. And she's going to continue doing it. She's doing more in her death than she did in her life.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
And this is why photos are so important. Annoy the kids, annoy the friends, annoy the family. Take the photos, because you never know then when that's all you're going to have.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
I'm an old school person. And as an old school person, the one thing you do is you go up to the father of the person you want to marry and you ask them for their hand in marriage, or parent, ask them for their hand in marriage. That didn't happen. We found out on Facebook. All of us, we did.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
That van was her pride and joy. She was really, really proud of that van. And we saw it was done really, really well.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
I mean, we kept sending her money, too, though. Let's just be real in this situation.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
I would Apple Pay her money, and then you would see, like, what's this Apple charge? And I'd be like, oh, I guess I got hacked. I'll order a new bank card. So, like, I think it was, like, four times in a year I got to get a new bank card just to play it off, you know?
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
We believe if a proper lethality assessment was done, Gabby would be here today.
20/20
Gabby Petito: Her Parents Speak Out
Yeah, I think it's something she wanted to do. I think she was looking at it more as a hobby at the moment and see where it can go from there.