A month after missing teen Sierra LaMar vanished on the way to school, her hopeful mother shows up whenever volunteers gather before scouring the fields, creeks and back roads in search of the girl whose complete disappearance has mystified police and captivated the nation.
"Thank you for the presence of everyone in the room right now," says Marlene LaMar to the searchers who always begin their task with a group prayer. In recent days, the mother linked hands with three dozen volunteers.
While the disappearance on the morning of March 16 of the petite, outgoing 15-year-old with a passion for cheerleading, rap music, Twitter and the color pink has drawn sympathy coast to coast, little has emerged from the investigation to unravel the mystery of where she is. Detectives on the case are quietly putting the scattered pieces of evidence together like a problematic jigsaw puzzle, revealing little except to the girl's family.
The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office said that's simply how it does business. The agency does not provide details as they come up because detectives aren't sure how important each detail is, where it might lead them or what might happen, says department spokesman Sgt. Jose Cardoza. There's no telling what Sierra's kidnappers, if there are any, or reluctant witnesses might do if they knew how close investigators were getting.
