Dad wants dead girl’s voice mails back

SEATTLE – When Faron Butler wanted to hear his daughter’s voice, he went to the voice mails she left him before she died of cancer at the age of 14.

“If I had a bad day or week, I’d listen to her voice. I’d listen to it a couple of times a week,” Butler said Friday from his home in Elma, Wash., holding back tears. “She’d be there, saying, ‘Daddy, I love you and I miss you.’ ”

But the voice mails are gone, erased in February when Butler joined a free trial of a messaging service offered by his cellphone carrier, T-Mobile, and he doesn’t believe company officials when they say the company can’t retrieve them.

T-Mobile said it’s working to compensate but has not been able to have a direct discussion with the Butler family.

Butler and his attorney, Chris Crew, said they are preparing legal action asking a court to force T-Mobile to retrieve the voice mails. The family also is seeking damages for emotional distress.

Butler’s daughter, Rhema, was diagnosed with cancer when she was 12 and died two years later, in June 2011. About a week before she passed away, she called her father. That’s one of the voice mails that’s gone. He had held on to them for about eight months.