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Sam Penrod ReportingToday marks the one-year anniversary of when a BYU student disappeared while on summer vacation, presumably after she was abducted. It's a case that Oregon police still have little to go on, other than to say that foul play was involved.
Brooke Wilberger had just finished her freshmen year at BYU when she went home to Oregon to work for the summer. She vanished in the middle of the day while she was at work, and few clues were left behind. Today her family says they are trying to balance reality with hope.
It was in an apartment complex parking lot near Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon that Brooke Wilberger was last seen. As she was cleaning lamp posts outside at 11:00 in the morning, she disappeared and has not been seen since.
Today her family says a year later they are doing their best to deal with the fact they still know nothing about what happened to Brooke.
Cammy Wilberger, Brooke's Mother: "This is not a day that we want to celebrate or commemorate in that way.
Greg Wilberger, Brooke's Father: "It's been a hard year, as you can probably imagine. You keep hoping every week that you will hear something, and as the weeks drag on you realize that it might take longer, you have to learn to have a lot of patience and a lot of trust and keep hoping."
For weeks after she disappeared hundreds of volunteers scoured the area all over western Oregon for any sign of Brooke. Police have investigated several persons of interest, but still have not name a suspect. And because her family believes Brooke had nothing to run from, they fear she was abducted against her will. That's why a year later they are hoping now for answers to what happened to her.
Cammy Wilberger: "You come to a realization that finding her alive is probably not as big as a percentage as you'd hoped for in the beginning. That's probably one of the biggest differences. Our hope right now is not the same that it was a year ago, because then we had great hope that we would find her alive. But as the months wear on, you still have that hope though, you don't give that up."
A website to help generate information about Brooke Wilberger still remains online; it is "FindBrooke.Com". Friends and old roommates of Brooke plan a candlelight vigil for her tonight at the Kiwanis Park in Provo at 7:30.
