Groups of volunteer searchers began passing out handbills and fliers with Spierer's picture on them Monday morning, some following the route of Bloomington Transit's #7 bus on the city's south side. Using tree branches to push back underbrush, the searchers combed areas around Bloomington High School South, but turned up no sign of Spierer. Bloomington South club wrestling coach Eric Meyer helped lead the search.
"I feel for the family because at this point, you don't know whether you're doing a recovery search. You don't know if maybe somebody's grabbed her and is holding her against her will," Meyer said. "You just don't know at this point, so you try to keep positive and you try to keep faith and hope, but at this point we're just trying to find what we can and help the family out with some type of closure or anything we can do."
Spierer, 20, is a fashion merchandising major and has not been heard from since early Friday morning, when she was seen near the intersection of 11th Street and College Avenue in downtown Bloomington. Bloomington Police Department Lt. Bill Parker said officers are coordinating search efforts with members of the Spierer family, and are re-interviewing Spierer's friends and roommates in hopes of turning up new information...
"People remember more things later, so we interview, re-interview, maybe re-interview yet again. If we get suggestions for other people that they think might be a person of interest, then of course we expand our interviews."
Despite media coverage of the disappearance over the weekend, not many fliers had been posted around the city as of Monday morning, including in stores and a firehouse searchers visited. And when some people, like Austin Despirito, 16, heard the news, it left them unsettled.
"If she was abducted or something out of the ordinary, I just hope for the best," he said.
Parker said there's no timetable for how long the searches will continue, adding the officers working the case haven't had an off day since it began.
