The Last Time We Saw Her. Robert Falcon Scott

the intangibles as well. Heidi Kinkade, who was one rider on a horseback team, noted, “We were told to really pay attention to our horses. Horses can smell and sense things and see things better than we can.”

      The main horse team search that Sunday was conducted by the Benton County Sheriff’s Mounted Posse. These were all volunteers trained in riding and search techniques in rough country. They covered an area known as Bald Hill Natural Area and then down into the McDonald-Dunn Research Forest. Meanwhile, searchers on foot scoured rural areas, such as William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge, Peavy Arboretum, Willamette Park and Natural Area, and E. E. Wilson Wildlife Area. The CPD was also asking landlords to check any vacant apartments and houses they owned—especially in outlying areas or properties that were heavily wooded.

      Not even psychics were being dismissed at this point. Lieutenant Noble admitted that more than four hundred of the one thousand tips that had come in were from people who had “psychic visions” about where Brooke might be discovered. Some of these tips were way off base, but others had given specific names of people they thought might be involved.

      Noble said, “We believe if we find the person responsible, we will find Brooke. So we’re using those names.”

      Besides the ordinary folks some of the searchers were professionals, halfway between ordinary citizens and law enforcement. Such a group of volunteers worked for a private company called the Simpson Wildland Firefighters. In the previous few years, these types of private-company wildland firefighters had sprung up all over the West. In conjunction with firefighters who worked for government agencies, these firefighters worked in often steep, rugged terrain. The Simpson Wildland Firefighters of Salem were one such group of individuals, highly trained and used to working in steep, brushy terrain.

      At the moment, however, they weren’t up in the mountains, but rather were on boggy flatlands in the Willamette Valley. John Harding, a crew boss, said that the current condition was much different from what they were used to. Nonetheless, they knew how to search thoroughly through heavy vegetation. At one point in Brooke’s search, the team had to cross chest-deep water of the Marys River. Harding said, “It was a challenge. It woke us up. It doesn’t matter to us about the terrain. We just want to find her.”

      Corey Fox, another member of the Simpson team, noted, “Mostly, we’re in high altitudes fighting forest fires. This is flat ground. It’s pretty easy for us by comparison. We have experience in the bushes. We have experience in finding stuff.”

      And yet, crew member Brandon Thrasher expressed what was on a lot of volunteers’ minds that day. Thrasher had experience in searching for missing persons, and he said, “Time is short. I just know more and more the likelihood of finding her alive is growing slim and slimmer.”

      Carol Reeves, a reporter for the Gazette-Times, explored this theme of mental and physical fatigue, which was plaguing all of the searchers. She spoke with Benton County chaplain Todd Pynch about this matter. Pynch had been at Ground Zero in New York City after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Pynch said that many volunteers of the Wilberger search effort were like those whom he’d seen at Ground Zero. They couldn’t turn it off, even when they left the area. He related, “It’s more of a twenty-four/seven thing than you realize.”

      Pynch spoke of the searchers not getting the rest they needed and not being able to shut off thoughts about the lost girl, even when they went home. After days of searching, the mental strain and physical strain began to take its toll. Pynch added that in a terrible car accident or even with suicide, there was a finality about those things; people moved on, in dealing with the event. But in a case like Brooke’s, there were only questions, anxiety, and tension from there being no finality. After a while frustration began to take hold in many searchers. They began asking themselves, “Why are we out here?”

      Pynch stressed to searchers that they had to take care of themselves, or they would be useless in the search effort. Their bodies would become too tired to function properly, and their minds would become numbed by the continued strain. And as far as frustration went, he assured searchers that even when they searched an area and came up empty, it was still valuable. It was one more plot of land that the command center could scratch off the map as having been searched.

      Pynch noted, “Any case that involves a child is more stressful. Everybody has empathy for a young girl being taken away. One of the stressors that came out of nine/eleven was the feeling that this couldn’t happen in America. The same is true now—this isn’t something that happens in Corvallis.”

      But it did happen in Corvallis, and no amount of perceived safety was going to change that fact. The emotional toll was starting to tell, even amongst trained personnel. By the ninth day of the search, Lieutenant Noble admitted that no items had been found that were linked to Brooke’s disappearance. And Noble admitted something else after nine grueling days: the amount of volunteers was starting to taper off.

      There were unforeseen factors, beyond the emotional and physical toll, that had to be dealt with as well. Much of the terrain being searched was wooded and filled with poison oak. In fact, four searchers had such bad reactions to an especially virulent patch of poison oak, they had to be treated by emergency medical technician (EMT) personnel. Peggy Pierson, of Benton County Emergency Services, related, “These were extreme reactions to allergies. The reactions included upper-respiratory problems, skin rashes, and swelling of the face.”

      One thing that law enforcement was taking a very close look at were the registered sex offenders in the area. Benton County had 140 of these, and all but nineteen were contacted the first week after Brooke’s disappearance. Neighboring Linn County had five hundred registered sex offenders, and these were checked out, too, as well as some in Lane County. There was even one individual from Linn County who became a person of interest when he tried to elude officers. When he was caught, it turned out that he had nothing to do with Brooke’s abduction.

      Of more interest to authorities was the alleged abduction attempt of another young woman in Corvallis on May 21, 2004, just three days before Brooke went missing. The young Asian woman in question had not initially talked to police about the incident, but rather told her friends at OSU, Marisa Birky and Michelle Raethke, about it.

      Diana Simpson, a spokesperson in the investigation, said that initially no one in law enforcement had spoken to this young woman. Like everyone else, they had read about it for the first time on May 27 when Birky and Raethke mentioned the incident in the Gazette-Times. It was only after that, that law enforcement was able to contact the young woman.

      CPD captain Bob Deutsch told reporters, “If indeed there was some connection between the two cases, especially if the vehicle had some connection to one of our persons of interest, then we’d have some really hot leads.” Deutsch did not say who the particular person of interest was or why the type of vehicle mentioned was important. But he did add that as of June 1, there were five persons of interest whom they were still looking at. And then he admitted that the detectives were starting to shorten their hours of working on Brooke’s case. About this aspect, Diana Simpson said, “It’s a bad situation, but there are still good motivated spirits. They want to work hard and be successful at this.”

      So did Brooke Wilberger’s parents. On the afternoon of June 1, Brooke’s family members and close to five hundred people gathered in front of the Benton County Courthouse in Corvallis for a prayer vigil. Larry Blake, bishop of the Veneta Ward of LDS, prayed for Brooke’s safe return. He thanked God for the good weather that helped searchers and thanked all the volunteers for their efforts. Blake declared, “We are so grateful for the blessing of unity. We have felt this week the oneness in searching for Brooke. So much has been donated. So many of the communities have given so much.”

      Ron Noble noted on that same day that the number of volunteers on June 1 had shrunk to around two hundred. At its peak there were well over a thousand people searching at any given time. Hope may have been waning in the community at large, but the Wilberger family was still staying strong in this regard. Cammy Wilberger told the volunteers, who had shown up at the stake center in Corvallis that day, “We feel the love.”

      In fact, help came in from multiple directions. By that time two regional cable companies