The Last Time We Saw Her. Robert Falcon Scott

4

      SEARCHING

      Brooke was supposed to come to her sister Stephanie’s apartment for lunch at twelve-thirty. When she didn’t show, Stephanie went to investigate. What she discovered in the apartment parking lot was unnerving—there was a bucket near a light fixture, but no Brooke anywhere.

      Stephanie Hansen and Kris Horner began searching the entire apartment complex for Brooke. It was not like Brooke to change plans without telling anyone. And why would she just leave a bucket of water near a lamppost and a job unfinished? That was not like her as well. Around one o’clock, Horner found Brooke’s blue-and-white flip-flop sandals in the parking lot. They were about eight feet apart from each other as if she’d suddenly lost them in haste. The thong on the right sandal had been pulled out.

      Stephanie and Kris kept on searching all throughout the complex, until around three o’clock. At that point they were so upset by no signs of Brooke, Stephanie phoned the Corvallis Police Department (CPD). A dispatcher took Stephanie’s statement and notated it as a missing person. What may have helped convince the dispatcher of the seriousness of the situation was Stephanie’s description of Brooke as being a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It was common knowledge that Mormons did not generally drink alcohol, take drugs, or engage in illegal activities. Stephanie later said of Brooke, “She’s a very responsible girl. She doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t party. She has a longtime boyfriend, who is off on a Mormon mission.”

      With other college-age girls at OSU, it’s possible the dispatcher might have been less convinced that something was amiss. There might have been many other possibilities—a sudden change of plans, going to meet a boyfriend or friends at school, an argument with her sister, or any number of things. But none of those factors seemed to apply to Brooke Wilberger. And the state of Brooke’s sandals was taken into account as well. Why would anyone leave them strewn in the parking lot like that, unless something out of the ordinary had occurred? The dispatcher agreed with Stephanie that something was wrong, and a CPD officer was dispatched to the Oak Park Apartments.

      Cammy Wilberger didn’t learn about Brooke’s disappearance until after she had finished teaching school for the day. Cammy called Brooke’s cell phone from class and was surprised when Brooke’s brother Spencer answered it.

      Cammy recalled, “So I chatted with him, and he didn’t say much. Finally I said, ‘Is Brooke there?’ And he said, ‘We can’t find her.’”

      “Spencer, don’t tease me!” Cammy replied to her son.

      “Mom, I’m not! We can’t find her!” Spencer responded.

      “I knew that something was horribly wrong! My arms, everything in my body, just drained out,” Cammy noted later.

      Cammy soon contacted her youngest daughter, Jessica, who was at home, and told her, “Something’s going on in Corvallis. We need to have a bag packed. I’m coming home now.”

      Then Cammy phoned her friend Cheryl Blake. Cheryl was the mother of Justin Blake, Brooke’s boyfriend, and also the wife of the bishop in the LDS ward in which the Wilbergers attended church. As soon as Cheryl heard about Brooke, she put the LDS network of families into action. One person called another, and soon the news had spread amongst LDS members all over the region.

      Greg Wilberger, who worked for the Borden Chemical company in Springfield, Oregon, was on his way to a business trip in San Francisco on that day. He was at the Portland International Airport when his family contacted him with the news. Greg immediately canceled his flight, got a rental car, and drove down to Corvallis, as fast as he could, in a daze. None of this seemed real. Corvallis was supposed to be a safe city. What had occurred there that his daughter would suddenly end up missing?

      It was around 4:00 P.M. when the first CPD officer arrived at the Oak Park Apartments complex and spoke with Stephanie Hansen and Kris Horner. He noted the vital statistics about Brooke—her age, height, weight, and what she had been wearing when last seen. Around this same time Brooke’s sister Shannon Cordon also arrived to join in the hunt for Brooke. Shannon later said, “It wasn’t like Brooke not to tell anyone where she was going. She just wouldn’t disappear on her own.” This fact was soon amplified by finding Brooke’s purse, car keys, and other personal items in the Hansens’ apartment. Brooke’s car was also still in the parking lot. Shannon told authorities, “She didn’t have anything with her except the clothes on her back.”

      More and more officers began arriving at the Oak Park Apartments in the search for the missing girl. They were taking this seriously and already starting to look at the situation as an abduction rather than just a missing person. Mike Morrow and his team of Benton County Emergency Services (BCES) workers joined the hunt at around 6:00 P.M. By six-thirty, they were setting up a staging area in the Oak Park Apartments complex parking lot to take in and coordinate volunteer searchers. It was amazing how quickly the word spread to people in the area—OSU students and especially members of the local LDS Church.

      Terry Malaska was a member of this latter group and she soon told a reporter, who had gotten wind of the situation, “When something like this comes up, we call the ward and say, ‘Help!’ And at that point we’ve got what are called home teachers, so it’s kind of like an automatic phone tree. Every household has a home teacher that contacts them, and within a few minutes you can talk to a lot of people.”

      Jared Cordon, Brooke’s brother-in-law, agreed, saying, “What happened was just amazing. We soon had several hundred people doing search-and-rescue work on Monday night. We had every local and regional law enforcement agency there. We got people taking two and three days off from work to help.” Cordon added that LDS members started using the Internet and ham radio to spread the word about Brooke. They also started passing out “Missing Person” flyers, which were coming off copiers at an incredible rate.

      Thousands of black-and-white copies of flyers showing a photo of Brooke were soon being distributed around Corvallis. The Kinko’s in town donated free color copies of a “Missing Person” poster as well. The poster had a photo of Brooke and in large red letters at the top, the word Abducted. It noted that Brooke was five-four, weighed 105 pounds, was nineteen years old, with blond hair and blue eyes. She had a scar on her right forearm, which ran from her wrist to her elbow. This was from a gymnastics accident. She was last seen wearing a gray BYU Soccer T-shirt, a blue FreshJive sweatshirt, and had a ring engraved with the letters CTR.

      The poster related: Brooke Wilberger is believed to have been abducted on 5/24/04 at approximately 10:50 AM from the 1200 block of SW 26^th Street in Corvallis, Oregon. Evidence suggests that Ms. Wilberger was alone, working in the parking lot of an apartment complex when she was abducted.

      A Corvallis Safeway grocery store provided free food to the hundreds of citizen volunteers, who had arrived at the Oak Park Apartments staging area, and the nearby Hilton Garden Inn provided free coffee and restrooms for the throng. Domino’s Pizza started donating free pizzas for the searchers.

      Peggy Pierson, of BCES, told a reporter, “The response is phenomenal. More than three hundred volunteers signed in. And those were just the ones who signed in.” The volunteers fanned out through the Oak Park Apartments complex, into the neighboring streets and the OSU campus. They searched parks, wooded areas, and along streambeds. Before long, the true number of searchers was probably around five hundred. Flyers began being distributed in other towns besides Corvallis, such as Philomath, Lebanon, Monroe, and Albany.

      Citizen volunteers weren’t the only ones on hand. By the night hours of May 24, there were law enforcement officers from the Corvallis Police Department, Benton County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO), and the Oregon State Police (OSP). Soon the Mary’s Peak Search and Rescue (MPSR) unit was there as well. These were the professionals in search-and-rescue missions. In their first foray, they went out with twelve volunteers, showing them how to do a grid search where every nook and cranny was thoroughly searched in an area. When MPSR came back from the first round of searching, there were seventy new volunteers waiting for them at the staging area. Jerry Smith, of MPSR, said of the volunteers, “They searched around Avery Park. They did phenomenally well.”