CORVALLIS — With broom handles, hockey sticks, tree limbs, ski poles and golf clubs in hand, the 13 members of Team Romeo stand at attention just after 3 p.m. on Saturday, shoulder to shoulder like a line of soldiers ready to charge into battle.
Team leader Scott Geiszler, a 275-pound logger from Albany who volunteered for the job, moves up and down the team’s ranks, surveying the members. He orders them to spread out one arm’s length apart, then points behind him to a boggy mass of shoulder-high grass and head-high tree limbs. In this patch of western Corvallis wild land, the team will search for Brooke Wilberger, a 19-year-old Brigham Young University student who police say fell victim to a brazen daytime abduction in a south Corvallis neighborhood on May 24.
Ashlie Bernhisel, a blue-eyed, freckled University of Oregon freshman wearing a spotless American Eagle sweatshirt and white tennis shoes, is one of those staring down a difficult mass of grass, mud and bushes. Like many of the others, she cracks a few jokes about how difficult the task will be, but she doesn’t complain.
Bernhisel doesn’t know Wilberger, a fellow Mormon, but she’s seen her at church. In fact, Bernhisel said she saw the Veneta native at the Eugene Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Institute of Religion on the corner of East 16th Avenue and Alder Street the day before the woman disappeared.
At about 3:15 p.m., Geiszler orders the team forward.
The line plunges into the grass. Searchers beat back brambles with sticks and level the shoulder-high grass. Bernhisel drives through the grass, poking, prodding and whacking with her stick, looking for the 5-foot-4-inch, 115-pound blond-haired Wilberger, or some clue that could crack the case. Bernhisel slips into a low, muddy spot, but catches herself and presses on.
Then, a man behind her stops and points out a possible lead — a water bottle standing upright on the ground.
Geiszler orders Team Romeo to stop.
Nobody speaks.
Geiszler asks the search team members to check for missing water bottles.
Bernhisel checks. It’s hers, she says. She collects the bottle.
The team marches forward again, destined to become one of the many fruitless searches by the Corvallis Police Department, countless search-and-rescue units, Mormon Church members, family and friends of Wilberger and complete strangers who simply want to lend a hand.
Bernhisel said she’ll keep searching for Wilberger as long as she can keep hitching rides to Corvallis. She already helped post some of the 15,000 informational fliers about Wilberger in Eugene, and she spent one day last week searching another wooded area in Corvallis.
“Anything you can do to help just makes you feel better,” she says. “I felt like I would want someone looking for me.”
Despite unsuccessful searching, Bernhisel says family, friends and fellow church members are still hopeful they’ll find Wilberger.
“I don’t think people would be out here if they weren’t,” she says.

Behind the search effort

Dale Romrell hurried between rooms Saturday at the volunteer staging area, directing incoming volunteers and coordinating the behind-the-scenes staff who keep the search operation working.
At the Mormon Church off Harrison Street that doubled as the center of operations, interested volunteers flooded in to learn when, where and how they could help. They collected fliers with information about Wilberger’s disappearance, buttons with a photograph of the woman and pin-on ribbons.
Returning volunteers rested, socialized and sipped warm minestrone soup. Volunteers — who spent much of the morning driving on country roads looking for tire tracks on the shoulder — reported their findings. Those who combed the wooded areas on horseback or pedaled through the city on bicycles reported in as well. Nobody returned with any leads.
From this location, 150 people had been sent out Saturday in vehicles to search the roadways, and another 100 went out on foot, Romrell said. As of Sunday afternoon, about 1,200 total volunteer searchers had combed 1,800 acres.
“People just really want to help; we don’t go out and look for volunteers,” he said. “Some people just walk in and want to help.”
Romrell said he searched Thursday and distributed some of the 30,000 fliers that have been disbursed in and around Corvallis. He said the church created the fliers within five hours of discovering Wilberger had disappeared, and the church had 300 locals searching with flashlights on the first night of her disappearance.
Romrell said there’s a $5,000 reward from the Carole Sund/Carrington Memorial Reward Foundation for Wilberger’s safe return. That money — plus a large contribution from Borden Chemical in Springfield, where Wilberger’s father works — puts the total reward at $30,000.

Still no leads
About 60 men, women and children waited in rows of chairs in a quiet, dimly lit room away from the hustle of the dining area. In this room, volunteers were briefed on how to conduct a search and what to expect.
Cpl. Rich Riffle of the Benton County Sheriff’s Office told morose volunteers not to touch anything suspicious they find, but to instead call a team leader to investigate. He told them to expect rough terrain with lots of poison oak and blackberry brambles.
He said everyone should expect to be the one to find Wilberger.
“If I send 80 of you out, 81 of you come back,” Riffle said.
But Riffle told volunteers he wasn’t going to candy-coat the improbability of finding Wilberger.
“What you’ve been hearing in the media is what we know,” he said. “We have no leads.”