A 15-year-old girl secretly texting road signs to her foster mother helped Oregon State Police troopers track down a fleeing vehicle on Interstate 84 Monday evening, ending a multi-agency, multi-county pursuit near Mosier with spike strips and an arrest. The driver, 35-year-old Nicole Diane Pearlstein of Fargo, North Dakota, was booked into jail on charges including first-degree custodial interference, felony attempting to elude police, reckless driving, and reckless endangering, along with an outstanding warrant.
According to an Oregon State Police incident report cited by Columbia Community Connection, Pearlstein was driving a white Chevrolet sedan and reportedly attempting to flee across state borders before troopers intercepted her. The pursuit began after Eugene Police were called to a home near West 29th Avenue, where the teen's foster mother told officers the 15-year-old had left with her non-custodial biological mother, as KOIN reported. Eugene police said they believed the teen's life was in danger, and the biological mother was found to be unsafe to care for the child because of paranoia, delusion, and prior mistreatment or abuse.
Texts From The Backseat Guided Troopers
The teen was texting her foster mother throughout the ordeal, later saying she was afraid she was being kidnapped. Oregon State Police troopers first found the vehicle traveling northbound on I-5, but lost sight of it after a short chase. It was the girl's own messages describing road signs she was passing that helped police relocate the vehicle on I-84, along with additional messages she sent that helped narrow down its position, ending what the outlet's reporting called a high-speed chase in The Dalles.
The pursuit stretched across jurisdictions before concluding near milepost 69 in Wasco County near Mosier, after troopers successfully deployed spike strips to disable the fleeing car, per the same Columbia Community Connection report. The response drew on coordination between Oregon State Police, the Hood River County Sheriff's Office, the Wasco County Sheriff's Office, The Dalles Police Department, and Intertribal Police, illustrating the scale of inter-agency response cross-state elusion attempts can demand. KOIN's reporting specifically credits Hood River County Sheriff's deputies with using the spike strips that ended the chase.
Felony Charge Carries Weight Under Oregon Law
Pearlstein was taken into custody after the chase ended and is now awaiting extradition to Lane County. Under Oregon Revised Statute 163.257, first-degree custodial interference is a Class B felony, applied when someone unlawfully takes a minor from a lawful custodian and either exposes the child to substantial risk of physical injury or attempts to remove them from the state, according to the Oregon Legislative Information System. A lesser version of the charge, second-degree custodial interference under ORS 163.245, is a Class C felony. Per FindLaw, Oregon law recognizes foster parents and guardians as lawful custodians, and expenses a custodian incurs to locate and recover a child are classified as economic damages subject to court-ordered restitution.
Pearlstein was lodged at the Northern Oregon Regional Correctional Facilities, known as NORCOR, in The Dalles. The facility operates as a regional adult jail and juvenile detention complex jointly managed by Wasco, Hood River, Sherman, and Gilliam counties, according to Sherman County Government, and was established as a multi-county cooperative to serve the Columbia River Gorge region.
A Broader Pattern In Oregon's Child Welfare System
This case lands amid wider scrutiny of Oregon's foster and child welfare systems. Federal data for fiscal year 2024 recorded 4,528 children in Oregon foster care, down from 6,741 in 2020, per the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But state data reported in May found that child maltreatment rates within Oregon's child welfare system reached a record high, despite state commitments under a 2024 federal class-action lawsuit settlement to improve foster care safety, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. Separately, an August analysis found that children in rural Oregon counties enter foster care at higher rates and face higher reported rates of parental mistreatment than children in urban areas, as documented by InvestigateWest.
The teen's rescue follows other recent Oregon cases involving custodial interference and child welfare concerns that Hoodline has covered, including a missing SE Portland infant. For now, Pearlstein remains in custody as she awaits extradition to Lane County, where the case against her will move forward.
