The last steps of a young girl

We stood almost slient, our breathe turning white against the morning sky, as the Sheriff told us what was ahead.

There were 150 of us. More had come but they only took the first 150. None of us were law or rescue people. Just people.

"This is something I can do," the small engine mechanice standing next to me said. "I haven't done my part for years but this is something I can do." Others nodded.

There was a woman with her college-age daughter. A bunch of hunters stood close by in their hunting browns and blaze orange vests. A black lady in a leather coat shivered but said she was warm.

The school bus pulled up and we started to board as the deputy called out each name. Soon, the crammed bus took its place in a convoy of police vehicles, fire trucks, and thirty or so trucks with ATV's in the box.

We were leaving the safety of town for the countryside along the Platte River. The countryside was covered in at least six inches of undisturbed snow. It would be our job to disturb it.

Hopefully, someone's boot would come into contact with the body of a twenty year old college girl who had gone missing with her boyfriend three days before. Others similar to our group had found the boy's body the day before. He lay barely visable in the snow and wore only a hooded sweatshirt. There was no way he would have survived.

The harsh Nebraska winter had claimed his young life, his brain somehow not functioning clearly enough to heed the warning of the 911 operator to stay in the safety of a small shed they had found. They left that safety, to try and find safety, and found death instead. Sadly, another heated building with a phone was only a few short steps-- separated from their sight by sleet and the numbing cold.

Even though this girl had not been found, the mission had switched from search to recovery. There was no chance she would have survived the ice storm, the six inches of snow, and the below zero Nebraska nights. No one doubted the winter stillness that gripped this place had also stilled her.

"I am here because I have girls and I couldn't stand the thought of someone's kid being out here," a man said.

I listened to some of the officers express their latest theories.

"They told 911 that they were talking to some black people who didn't understand English," a tropper said. "We think they were disoriented and were actually talking to some cows along the road."

Can you imagine being that cold, that lost, and that scared? His truck had slid off the road and it was almost two miles away from where he took his last step. But where was she?

Before long, the officers had us stretched out, shoulder to sholder, and we were slowly walking through fresh snow about mid calf deep. Sometimes the snow drifts were knee deep. Sometimes you would fall into a little hole and be waist deep. Is that what happened to her?

"Raise your hand if your feet hit something," my team leader barked out.

Once in a while, someone did. But for the most part, the uneveness was some form of clod or junk that littered the place.

We walked away from where the boy was found. The others the day before had already searched the ground close to him. Did he leave her in some safe place and set off alone? Was she out ahead of him? What did he say to her? What story did his path tell? Could she be in something like the discarded deepfreeze close to the road or some of the construction equipment that lay, drifted in the snow? We checked and rechecked. We used sticks to poke holes through the drifted snow. The landscape went from a perfect shining sea of white to endless boot tracks as we crossed the quarter section and then returned back the other way.

"That's exactly what we want," the deputy said. "We want to see all of that snow disturbed."

But we had found nothing.

The gravel pit lake and the river close by were frozen over. But the kids had gone missing in a sleet storm. Could she have fallen into the lake before it froze? They wouldn't let us get within 50 feet of it. This was a sand pit and dredging creates a hollow shelf of sand over the lake. They worried that we might break off the shelf and maybe end up in the lake.

Is that what happened to her? We may never know because the winter snow had covered everything. Where are you little girl? Where are your last steps so we can find you?

There was a sea of simple prayers coming from this place that said simply, God help us find you.I know because I could see it in everyone's eyes.

You belong with the family who loves you little girl. Not here. Not in this forbidding place.

We searched on because somehow, the cold we should have felt never came.