Found this CNN News Story today...
I don't know which quote bothers me more:
"There was no police search," [sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart] added. "We felt she was most likely a runaway."
- or -
"'We had already given her up and let her be dead in our hearts' the girl's mother, Jean Hatch, told KOMO-TV."
I'd hate to think I could go missing for more than a week and that my family would begin to grieve and the local constabulary assume I'd "run off" when in reality I was literally lying in a ditch somewhere...
Cheers to the Volunteers who searched, and cheers to those who found.