About 100 family members and friends of Annie Hernandez participated in a candlelight walk in Galt Saturday night to pray for the safe return of Hernandez and her two daughters.
"Lord, you know exactly where they are," Pastor Manuel Hernandez from New Life Ministries in Lodi said during a special "prayer of hope" at the Galt Boys and Girls Club before the candlelight walk began. "We ask you to help you locate them."
The ceremony and walk was in honor of Hernandez, 34, who has been missing since Nov. 2. Her daughters, Jesika Hernandez, 2, and Korra Meyers, 5, disappeared with their mother.
"No one has seen or heard from them," Annie Hernandez's husband, Armando, told the crowd. "I need the community's help in finding them."
Annie Hernandez and her daughters were last seen in a McDonald's Restaurant parking lot off Interstate 5 and Pocket Road in South Sacramento. She and Armando Hernandez had an argument earlier in the evening in their Galt home, so detectives thought she might have gone somewhere to cool off.
Galt police Lt. Jim Uptegrove has said continually since December he has exhausted all possible leads.
After seven family members and friends pleaded with the community to help search for the family, the crowd took lighted candles and walked west on C Street from the Valley Oaks Shopping Center, south on South Lincoln Way and north on Chabolla Avenue back to the Boys and Girls Club.
"I don't think there is much hope they are alive," said Pastor Manuel Hernandez, Armando's brother. "I know her character, and that is to call."
Family and friends are especially worried about the family's well being because Annie Hernandez has also been very close to her mother, Jeanne Peterson of Dixon, and her sister, Denise Gaskins of Sacramento. Both have said that Annie Hernandez phoned them almost daily.
What also makes Annie Hernandez's disappearance suspicious is that she paid her rent the day she disappeared.
"Why was she going to pay the rent if she was going to leave?" her landlord, Cindy Borgerding of Galt, said after the walk.
"I know they had problems, but she was always proud to be his wife," Borgerding said.
Annie Hernandez was always concerned about her husband's well-being, especially the 12- to 14-hour days he put in as a heavy-equipment operator for Teichert Construction in Sacramento, said Borgerding's husband, John.
"I've got to keep myself busy or I'm going to go crazy," Armando Hernandez said.
Family members and friends asked those in attendance to distribute fliers containing Annie Hernandez's and her daughters' photographs along with a description of them and the van she was driving.
"Teichert passed out 2,000 fliers with their paychecks this week," Armando Hernandez said. "They knew something was going on, but they didn't know it was one of their own."
Kimberly Wrage, whose sister Cyndi Vanderheiden of Clements disappeared in November 1998 and is presumed to have been murdered, asked the Galt community to become more involved.
"Clements is a lot smaller than Galt, but we had 500 people show up for a search (for Vanderheiden)," Wrage said during the prayer of hope.
Wrage also asked people to notify the Cyndi Search Foundation or Galt police of any shred of evidence, no matter how minor it may seem.
"I don't care if it's a tennis shoe, a sock or a hair ribbon," Wrage said.
Galt police continued to be criticized for what some people perceive as a lack of effort in investigating the Hernandez family's disappearance.
Borgerding, the landlord, said she immediately called Galt police after Armando Hernandez came to her house on Nov. 18 and told her that three members of his family had been missing more than two weeks.
"I called the Galt Police Department because I couldn't believe they hadn't called to interview me," Borgerding said. "I asked, 'Could this be real?' and they said, 'Yeah, we have somebody who's missing.' "
Phil Bauman of Sacramento, Annie Hernandez's brother, said he is stunned by what's happened to his family.
"It's weird," he said. "You see these things happening on the news. You don't think it's going to happen to you."
A new toll-free hotline will be in operation in about a week. The number is 1-(877) 4-U-ANNIE. This week, people with information or questions about the case may call Cyndi Search headquarters at 1 (888) 44-CYNDI.