The room was silent except for the clack of crutches on the floor as Judy Compton hobbled to the front, a cast on her right leg, to pick up her plaque from the state attorney general.
Compton and 20 other families of missing people in Arkansas attended the fifth-annual Never Forgotten event Thursday at Camp Robinson in North Little Rock. State Attorney General Leslie Rutledge presented each family with a plaque in recognition of their missing loved one.
Compton attended grief-counseling sessions Thursday and talked with other mothers of missing children. She said that the grief counseling helped her, but there are still times when she feels hopeless.
"It takes all the life out of you," she said, wiping her tears on a crumpled tissue.
Her daughter, Cassie Compton, was 15 when she vanished Sept. 14, 2014, from Stuttgart.
She had gone out with a friend, but texted her mother at about 6:05 p.m that she had returned home. Her mother was already home, and after chatting briefly, Cassie left the house again.
It was the last time Judy Compton saw her.
Compton contacted the police that night but was told that she needed to wait until the next morning to file a missing persons report. She said she didn't think that Police Department's initial efforts to find her daughter were sufficient.
"They just kind of went off on a wild goose chase," she said.
About 140 law enforcement officers spent Thursday morning in a training session, said Cindy Murphy, public affairs director for the attorney general.
Sgt. Mark Simpson of Arlington, Texas, led the three-hour session. Simpson directed the task force established in 1996 to find Amber Hagerman, the namesake of Amber Alert, the nationwide emergency response system that is used to send information about missing people.
Amber was 9 when she disappeared in the middle of the day during a bicycle ride with her brother. Her body was found in a water-filled ditch four days later.
Simpson walked officers through the process the task force went through to find Amber, how officers investigated her murder and how others can do better.
"Anytime I can talk to you about someplace I took a bloody nose, that's one you don't have to do," Simpson said.
He said many agencies don't plan abduction-response procedures before a kidnapping occurs, but they should.
He also spoke about the importance of documenting every potential piece of evidence, organizing it digitally and thoroughly searching crime scenes, even places such as clothes hampers and washing machines.
"If you don't look, it ain't searched," Simpson said.
Brett Pritchard, a state police officer from Springdale, said the reminders to check every piece of evidence and follow every lead were the most informative parts of the presentation.
"It's interesting, the things you can miss," he said. "That's always a concern."
Pritchard has worked on a couple of cases involving missing children and said the only active case he is involved with is Morgan Nick's. Morgan was 6 when she was abducted from a Little League baseball game in Alma in 1995 while catching lightning bugs with friends. She was never found.
Simpson also emphasized the importance of getting the family involved in the investigation, calling it "critical to what we do."
He said Amber's mother, Donna Williams, came to the police station a few times. She put up pictures of her daughter and used a marker and a piece of paper to rename the conference room where officers stored all of the investigation's leads and paperwork "Amber's Room."
Simpson said it helped the team remember to keep Williams informed about the investigation.
The Camp Robinson event was about remembering the 510 people reported missing in Arkansas and continuing efforts to try and find them, said Colleen Nick, Morgan's mother.
"Everyone deserves to be found, regardless of the outcome," she said.
After the ceremony, as the second grief counseling session began, Judy Compton stretched the bottom of her white T-shirt to better show the picture of her missing blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter.
"I just want to find my baby," she said.
Metro on 07/08/2016