More than 1,000 volunteers spread out Thursday in a search of rural areas around the home of a missing woman who was 9 months pregnant when she disappeared.

“I think every single rock will be turned over on this search,” said organizer Tim Miller, who runs the internationally active search team Texas EquuSearch.

Miller had expected about 200 volunteers Thursday and said he was a bit overwhelmed by the turnout. His team also brought in sonar equipment to check ponds and a remote-control airplane equipped with a camera to look for any sign of the missing woman, Jessie Davis.

Davis’ younger sister, Whitney Davis, who wore a T-shirt with her sister’s picture and the word “Missing” in red letters.

“They’re going to help us find Jessie, hopefully, bring her back safe,” she said.

It could prove to be a massive break in the mysterious disappearance of a Red Deer woman on B.C.’s infamous Highway of Tears.

Ray Michalko, a Vancouver-based private investigator probing the baffling missing-persons case of Nicole Hoar, is turning his attention to an area of mostly bush just south of Highway 16 and west of Prince George.

“I’ve got three independent sources of information that are pointing to that direction,” Michalko, 59, told Sun Media Sunday.

Among the clues he will be looking for, Michalko hopes to find “clothing and human remains.”

It’s a high profile missing persons case: A pregnant Pevely woman, gone for twenty months. Now investigators hope technology will provide them with the break they need to find her.

But they’re not using special forensic equipment or a police database. They’re using the social networking site “My Space.”

This isn’t your typical My Space page. While it does have pictures and messages, the primary goal here is generating new leads in this cold case.

The family has documented each day she’s been gone, held vigils and even made pleas in the paper for her safe return. But now Hubert and Bertha Propst are searching somewhere else for their missing daughter: online.

When Janice Smolinski’s 31-year-old son Billy disappeared in 2004, there were no Amber Alerts, no urgent police investigations.

Police made the family wait three days to report the Waterbury man’s disappearance because a neighbor believed he had left town voluntarily. They had to organize their own search parties and pressure police to fingerprint Billy’s truck, his mother said.

When authorities did take the case, they lost or misplaced the family’s DNA samples — including Billy’s razor shavings — three times, Smolinski said.

Two-and-a-half years later, Billy Smolinski is nowhere to be found and his mother has joined a national grass-roots effort to lobby for more consistent laws for handling missing adult cases.

Missing People Podcasts Highlight Individual Stories, Helpful Resources and Important Related Legislative Issues

Project Jason, a non-profit organization, announced today that it has created a partnership with the Missing People Podcast (MPP) to develop audio programming for missing people and the families who are urgently searching for them. The podcasts will feature a variety of subjects, including vital information regarding the circumstances surrounding a person’s disappearance and significant legislative efforts throughout the country that may impact the families.

Very few people would think of the number of missing persons in America as a crisis. The statistics, however, are sobering. In the United States alone, there are as many as 105,000 active missing person’s cases. Every year, tens of thousands of people vanish under suspicious circumstances. The number of missing persons can be estimated in the hundreds of thousands if viewed over a 20-year period.

A database is aimed at helping officers reunite those who get lost with their families.

A new police database is designed to help people who suffer from dementia get back home safely if they get lost.

A computer log of information, police hope, will better connect people who suffer from dementia-related illnesses with their families.

“If the Return Home Registry works just once so police can reacquaint a person with their family in a safe and timely manner, that’ll make the program worthwhile,” said Sgt. Troy Gielish, who is administering the program.

62-year-old studies old evidence with hope that technology can help

When Robert Wachsmuth arrives at his job at the Sheriff’s Department, he turns on the lights - because he’s usually the first one there.

The fact that Wachsmuth, 62, is even at work is unusual, since he retired in 1998.

Wachsmuth is still retired - at least that’s what his badge says - but now he’s back at work as a civilian investigator on cold cases, and he makes it his business to show up at 6 a.m.

This week law enforcement from all over the state is meeting in the Fox Cities to learn better ways to handle missing persons cases. A lot of the training has to do with looking past the statistics and into the family’s pain.

In August of 1992, Laurie Depies vanished, and no one knows where she is today. Yet at the time, early on, no one seemed to believe the 21-year-old was taken against her will.

“You still have that myth that the person is of age and a young adult, they have the right to go where they want to, to do what they want to, and they’ll just show up. And that was not just the mentality locally but that’s the national mentality, and still somewhat is,” Jay Breyer, an advocate for missing persons, says.

The FBI says so far this year in Wisconsin alone more than 1,200 people have been reported missing– an overwhelming amount.

The list of missing persons in the United States grows longer every year, but now a Miami shoe designer is hoping a new sneaker that can track your every step will help curb the trend.

“In a split second, your child can be gone,” mother Andrea Barrett said.

That’s all it took for Barrett to realize her 8-year-old daughter Nicholay was missing one day while the family was at a city fair.

“She couldn’t find us, (and) we couldn’t find her,” Barrett said.

Eventually Barrett found her daughter but says it was still a scary moment — something to which Issac Daniel can relate.

Inherent bias in the news media affects which missing persons get coverage - and which don’t
In 2005, there were approximately 109,531 active missing persons in North America. According to The National Crime Information Centre, this includes individuals of varying age, sex, race and class.

With such a large number, it is next to impossible for journalists to cover every missing person story, in addition to the other unrelated events that occur every day. As a result, the general public is exposed to only a small fraction of that number through the media.

• Group for Private Investigators
• Group for Process Servers