The Last Time We Saw Her

by Robert Scott

  CHAPTER 5

  VOLUNTEERS

  The frenzied activity at the LDS stake center did not abate by the fourth day of Brooke’s disappearance. Parties of forty volunteers were still assembling every few hours at the stake center and were being sent out on search missions. While one worn-out team came in from the field, another fresh team went out to replace them. By now, more than two hundred businesses were donating food and drinks to the volunteers. Chambers Construction, of Eugene, where Brooke had once worked, paid for thirteen thousand flyers distributed in the Thursday edition of the Corvallis Gazette-Times. Tammy Crafton, a Chambers Construction Company spokesperson, said that many workers personally knew Brooke and were saddened by her disappearance.

  Many, many more volunteers who had never met Brooke Wilberger considered her to be one of their own by now. One of these volunteers was Janelle Wikel, of Albany. She told a reporter that she was eating breakfast on the morning of May 26 and saw a news report about the missing girl. Janelle said, “There was something about it that touched me.” So Janelle and her young daughter went to the stake center in Corvallis and volunteered. There she saw pink ribbons that were being constructed. The pink ribbon idea was the brainchild of Shannon Reich. Reich had been on volunteer duty for a lengthy period of time; the others finally told her to go home and get some rest. Shannon went home, but she didn’t rest. Instead, she started making bows out of pink ribbons to show support for Brooke Wilberger and her family. Soon ribbons started showing up on members of the Wilberger family, volunteers, and even law enforcement personnel.

  When Janelle Wikel arrived at the stake center, she got an idea of her own. She began making buttons with Brooke’s photo in the center of the button. It would not only show support for Brooke, but also give an idea of what the missing girl looked like to anyone who saw it. Before long, Philomath Elementary School donated button supplies for the construction of hundreds of such buttons, and a button-making machine was donated from Adams Elementary School. Heidi Neuffer, LDS relief society coordinator, noted, “The schools are really supportive.”

  By May 26, all age groups were helping out in the massive effort in Corvallis and its surrounding area. Two Philomath High School students were among the throng of teenagers out in the field and at the stake center. Shelby and Ashley Sparks were just a few of the many students who cut classes, with administration approval, so that they could donate their time. The sisters helped construct “support ribbons” out of pink ribbon and safety pins. They were LDS members who personally knew the Wilberger family, and they said that keeping busy helped them deal with the situation.

  Teachers were involved in the outreach as well. Bob Baker, Brooke’s high-school Spanish teacher, joined a search team on May 27. He described Brooke as being quiet in class, but not shy or afraid to speak her mind. Baker related, “If I had to make a list of people this would happen to least, Brooke would be at the top of that list.”

  Brooke’s parents, Greg and Cammy, were incredibly appreciative of all the outpouring of support from the community. They shook hands with volunteers and hugged others when they went to Corvallis. On May 27, Greg told a reporter, “We’re holding up pretty good.” By late Thursday afternoon, nearly one thousand acres had been thoroughly searched in an arc spreading out from the Oak Park Apartments. But not one substantial clue as to what had happened to Brooke—or where she was—had been found. Once again it seemed amazing that Brooke could have been abducted in broad daylight in the middle of Corvallis.

  That same Thursday afternoon, eleven members of Brooke’s extended family held a press conference at OSU. They not only were there to thank all the people searching for Brooke, but to tell more about her as well. Brooke’s brother-in-law Zak Hansen said of Brooke, “The sisters and their mother are very close. They do a lot together. I used to take Brooke snowboarding. She picked it right up.”

  Brooke’s mother, Cammy, spoke about Brooke’s language skills, which had developed later than most children. Brooke was four or five years old before she said any words that were comprehensible. Despite this late start in that area, it did not hold her back later in school. By the time Brooke was in high school, she was getting almost all A’s. Cammy related, “I’m a teacher, so I keep track of this stuff. She had one B in high school in Advanced Placement American history. That was very frustrating for her.”

  Brooke wasn’t good just in academics; she had fun in extracurricular activities as well. During Spirit Week in high school, Brooke dressed up with Super-man children’s underwear over her black tights and wore a cape. She was a foundation board member in the Children’s Miracle Network drive and helped raise $20,000 that year for the charity. On another occasion she got her parents to drive her to Seattle, Washington, to pick up one thousand Krispy Kreme doughnuts, which she then brought back to Elmira, Oregon, and sold at a fund-raiser.

  In high school Brooke coached a soccer team of seven-year-olds, and she competed in soccer and track. Erin Shankle, one of Brooke’s classmates, spoke of how good Brooke was in track, especially the long jump. And Erin added about the relationship between Brooke and her mother, “I remember her mom would always be right there. She was like a volunteer coach. She was definitely there every single track meet.”

  Brooke’s father, Greg, addressed Brooke’s decision to go to Brigham Young University in Utah. He said, “We were really kind of surprised when she picked BYU. All the other kids went to Oregon State University.” It came as even more of a surprise to Greg when his daughter took up country line dancing in Utah. Brooke had never shown any interest in that while she lived in Oregon. She was always open to trying new things.

  Cammy related that the family wasn’t rich, and Brooke had to save up her money to go to college so far away from her hometown. Cammy noted that Brooke had jobs every summer and was doing dining service at BYU. Part of Brooke’s responsibilities in that job was to make food deliveries. She had to drive a large truck, and Brooke was very proud of that fact. She once called her mother and said, “Mom! I drove it in the snow!” For petite Brooke, this was quite an accomplishment.

  Zak Hansen added that at BYU Brooke “definitely had goals. Schooling is very important to her.” Then Zak spoke of Brooke’s boyfriend, who was also an LDS member. Her boyfriend was on a mission in South America, and Greg noted that Brooke had spoken of going on a mission herself.

  The family members concluded the press conference by stating that they wanted Brooke to know that they loved her and were going to keep looking for her. Cammy Wilberger said, “We would do anything to bring Brooke home. We feel that families are forever. We know that we will see her again.”

  It’s important to note that Cammy Wilberger didn’t say that she knew they would see Brooke again soon or even in this life. Families are very important in the LDS faith. It’s believed that when a person died, he or she would meet up once again with other family members in the afterlife.

  After the Wilberger press conference, Lieutenant Ron Noble told reporters that no substantial clues had been discovered as of yet. He said, “We’ll continue to follow up on tips from the phone calls to determine if we have a potential suspect.”

  Soon thereafter, Greg Wilberger told a reporter for the Statesman Journal that his family was in constant touch with Elizabeth Smart’s family in Utah. Elizabeth Smart had been abducted by a crackpot zealot in 2002 and had been held captive for several months. To some degree, her abductor had brainwashed Elizabeth into believing that he was a prophet. Elizabeth probably did so, in part, as a survival mechanism often known as the Stockholm syndrome. The abducted person becomes grateful to her kidnapper for not killing her; as a result, she starts to identify with the abductor. The victim will do anything to please the abductor. One prime example of this was Patty Hearst, who, after being “brainwashed,” identified with her captors in the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), and eventually joined them in their criminal activities, such as robbing banks.

  Elizabeth Smart was reunited with
her family in March 2003. Elizabeth Smart’s parents were giving the Wilberger family invaluable advice about how to cope and stay positive under extremely difficult circumstances. Authorities in Utah who had worked on the Elizabeth Smart case let the Wilbergers know that in three days of searching around Corvallis, the Oregon volunteers had accomplished what it took three weeks to do on the Smart case in Utah.

  Greg said, “People have been asking, ‘How do you feel?’ You don’t feel. You don’t think. You can’t have any feelings. You just go forward.”

  Cammy added that she and her daughters had planned a “girls-only trip” to San Francisco in the summer months. All of that was, of course, on hold now. The primary thing in everyone’s mind was getting Brooke back.

  Despite the statement by Cammy Wilberger in which she didn’t mention if they would see Brooke again soon, the Wilberger family did not give up hope that Brooke would be found alive. During another press conference, Greg Wilberger sounded more optimistic than in previous days. He said, “If she wasn’t alive, we’d have found her already.”

  In fact, Ron Noble seconded this feeling of Greg’s by saying, “We’re a little more optimistic. We’re approaching that time if she wasn’t alive, we’d have found her.” The implication was that if someone had kidnapped Brooke and intended to kill her, he would have done so in a matter of days after the initial abduction. And because traveling with Brooke very far would have been risky, her body should have been found in the area surrounding Corvallis, if she was dead. Since the search had been so thorough, with literally thousands of volunteers, the odds were that Brooke’s body would have been discovered by now, even in a remote location.

  Not that the search effort was abating at all. Zak Hansen told a reporter, “Hope comes from seeing five hundred people out there looking. No matter how long it takes to find her, we’ll keep looking. This is our life right now.”

  Jared Cordon did admit that the family was working until they were sleep-deprived. When he finally crashed on May 27, Cordon slept right through his alarm clock and missed the appointment for an interview on a national television morning show. Nonetheless, Cordon, as well as the others in the family, was still upbeat. “We think we’re going to find her soon,” he said.

  Over the weekend of May 29 through May 30, many students in the area didn’t spend their time relaxing or partying. Instead, they were out on one of the search teams or working at the stake center. This huge effort had even spread to other cities in the area, where it was deemed Brooke might have been taken. There were searches going on around Albany, Salem, and Eugene. In Eugene, a particular wooded area on the southwest side of the city was the focus of an intense search. A Times-Gazette reporter spoke with some of the people there, including Jim Webb and his son. Jim said, “We’re looking for anything suspicious—tracks, abandoned vehicles. It just touches the heart.”

  Members of Corvallis’s bicycle clubs were out that weekend as well, looking for signs of Brooke during their usual rides. They picked up search area maps and instructions at the main headquarters before taking off. Being on bikes, the riders could cover a lot more area than someone walking. They were instructed to look for anything unusual on their journeys, and they kept their eyes open as they pedaled down the back roads of Benton County and beyond.

  Bikes weren’t the only conveyances besides motor vehicles and foot traffic that weekend. On Sunday, May 30, the first large-scale organized horse team of searchers took off into the outlying areas. Being on horseback had several advantages over being on foot. Obviously, the rider could cover more ground than someone walking; and in addition to that, a rider had a height advantage over someone on foot. While on horseback he or she could peer down into vegetation that might be missed by someone walking down a trail.

  And there were 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.