Moving a small cardboard box packed with index cards closer to him on the table, Chris Edward held his forefinger on a card about three-quarters of the way to the back, marking his place.
Edward stood still, giving the occasional affirmative nod, as he listened to David Clark tell him about his mother, Patsy Clark, who stepped into a taxi in Little Rock on March 4, 1987, and was never seen again.
"I'm not sure if I'm on the right path," Clark told Edward.
Edward, the coordinator of unidentified missing persons with the state Crime Laboratory, looked down at the marked index card in front of him on the table.
"I think I might know someone who can help you," he said.
Edward -- who calls himself the "middle man" -- was one of dozens of experts, law enforcement personnel, laboratory technicians and missing persons' caseworkers on hand Wednesday during the fourth annual "Never Forgotten: Arkansas Takes Action" event at Camp Robinson in North Little Rock.
The event, sponsored by Attorney General Leslie Rutledge, gets families of missing children and adults together with law enforcement officials to open up lines of communication, provide training, give families an opportunity to update information and provide DNA samples, and to allow families a chance to bond with others in similar circumstances.
The 30 missing children and adults who were represented by their families and supporters at Wednesday's event represent a small percentage of the more than 470 children and adults who are listed as missing in Arkansas, Rutledge said.
"No matter how many years it has been, we all share a common goal," Rutledge told the crowd. "You are not alone, and Arkansas will never forget."
Colleen Nick -- the mother of Morgan Nick, who was 6 when she was last seen at an Alma ball field in 1995 -- told the crowd that she knows how it feels to get up every single day and not have an answer.
Nick spoke about Amanda Berry, one of three abducted women held for years by the now-dead Ariel Castro in his Cleveland home. Berry told rescuers that she had seen her mother speaking in television interviews, fighting to find her.
"We must move heaven and earth to find every one of them," Nick said. "Every person deserves to be fought for. I want Morgan to know that there was an army of people fighting for her."
In the 20 years since her daughter's abduction, Nick, who has become a well-known state and national advocate for missing children, said the state's training for law enforcement officers in such cases and the response to missing children and adults has "grown phenomenally."
Nick pointed to state Rep. Bill Gossage, R-Ozark -- who secured $50,000 in state funds this year for training the state's two child abduction response teams -- as an example of the state's growing commitment to getting missing loved ones back to their homes.
"He's fighting so that 20 years later, a family is not standing here still searching," Nick said.
As the faces of missing people appeared on two video screens, their loved ones walked to the front of the room to accept from Rutledge a yellow rose of remembrance.
Some sobbed into Rutledge's embrace, while others stoically accepted the roses and walked haltingly back to their seats.
Luci and Jim Murray, whose 49-year-old son, James Murray, was last seen in Jonesboro on Christmas in 2012, said the event gave them hope.
"I came in today, and I just told my husband, 'I just have a feeling we're going to find him,'" Luci Murray said.
In a room set up with tables and computer screens and staffed with caseworkers from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Lee Reed -- a retired missing-persons investigator from Abilene, Texas -- handed his cellphone to Judy Compton of Stuttgart.
Compton held the phone in one hand and cradled her head in the other, sobbing "thank you" into the receiver. The national caseworker had been assigned to guide Compton through the process of finding her 16-year-old daughter, Cassie Compton, who was last seen on Sept. 14 in Stuttgart.
"This has been a total nightmare," Compton said after returning the cellphone to Reed. "It's just devastating."
Twisting her hands together, she looked at the carpeted floor.
"I was late today. I got lost," she said. "I was sad because I was late. I felt like I let her down somehow."
Compton talked about working with law enforcement officers and not knowing what questions to ask, when to contact them or her rights as a mother of a missing child. If it wasn't for "friends and the Lord," she wouldn't be standing, she said.
"I have to pray a lot," she said. "A couple of times, I thought I was going to die."
Compton smiled as she talked about her daughter, a vivacious teenager who liked to draw and experiment almost daily with her hair color and style.
"She's my sweet little angel. We were so close," Compton said.
The chair rattled rhythmically to the incessant shaking of her legs. Catching a red folder before it fell from her lap, Compton's hands trembled as she filtered through the contents -- news clippings, pages of handwritten notes and pictures.
Then came hiccuping sobs.
"She was barely a 100 pounds and thought she could take on anything," Compton said, then looked up fiercely. "Stay involved in your child's life and make sure you know what they're doing. Be careful who they hang out with. You can know someone a 100 years and still not know them."
State Desk on 06/11/2015