WOODSTOCK -- Rejected by her stripper mother and taken in by a couple that soon split, storm clouds gathered early over the life of Terri-Lynne McClintic.
Her adoptive father yesterday recalled an unfortunate childhood marked by several moves across Ontario and the total deterioration of any relationship with her paternal family.
"This is just blowing me away," said Rob McClintic, who hasn't seen Terri-Lynne in a decade. "I'm standing here right now, still shaking.
"It just appals me to hear of anyone doing anything like that to a child. My heart goes out to (Tori's) parents."
A trucker living in Smiths Falls, McClintic says his former wife, Carol, agreed in the early 1990s to adopt a baby girl born to a fellow Woodstock stripper.
He allowed her to put his name on the birth certificate as the father.
"I wasn't even there for the conception or the birth," he said.
He and Carol split a short time later. She got custody and moved with her daughter around Ontario for years. The McClintic family has had no contact with Terri-Lynne since.
But Nancy McClintic, Rob's mother, did know her adoptive granddaughter had returned to Woodstock a few years ago, though they never spoke.
Sitting in the kitchen of her Woodstock townhouse yesterday, the emotional grandmother described the shock of hearing her family name connected to the Tori Stafford disappearance.
"I'm really shaken right now," she said. "I watched (the Tori case) a lot when it first started. She looks like one of the little girls that lives here.
"All of us felt so horrible that she had been taken away. She was such a sweet girl."
Terri-Lynne was eight -- the same age as the girl she's now charged with abducting -- when her grandmother last saw her. The memories of that little girl remain vivid.
"She was a sweet little girl," Nancy said. "She was sweet and special."
Upon returning with her mom to Woodstock, though, Terri-Lynne was "getting into trouble, hanging out with the wrong people," McClintic says her family was told.
The grandmother, nearing 70, has faced her share of recent woes: Having survived breast cancer twice, she learned yesterday she may now need a new kidney.
But that hasn't stopped her from volunteering -- she runs a fundraising event for breast-cancer research. The news of her granddaughter's arrest, delivered by reporters arriving at her home yesterday morning, may prove an even tougher challenge.
"I haven't seen Terri-Lynne since she was . . . eight. We loved her and I tried to help her."
When asked if those feelings have changed with yesterday's stunning developments, an emotional McClintic paused.
"I don't know now," she said. "I'm so mixed up."
