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MISSING GIRL'S PARENTS HOPEFUL Published on Thursday, September 8, 1994 (Madison Newspaper Archives) (Author information unavailable) A National Guard crew joined volunteers tramping through woods and cornfields looking for 12-year-old Cora Jones, missing since Monday, while her mother issued a plea Wednesday for her safe return. "Please don't hurt her. Please. She's just the sweetest, sweetest girl," said Vicki Jones, whose daughter disappeared while riding her bicycle. "She has gone through so much hurt in her life, please don't hurt her no more," the mother, fighting back tears, said at a news conference. "She has been on medication all her life. She needs it. She can't go too many more days without it." Cora, a seventh-grader at Weyauwega-Fremont Middle School, needs medication daily because she had a kidney removed when she was 3-years-old. About 400 people searched Wednesday for the girl, last seen by friends about 2:20 p.m. on Labor Day about a half-mile from her grandmother's rural Waupaca home. The girl's scratched and dented red-and-white bicycle was found in a nearby ditch. Gov. Tommy Thompson dispatched a three-person National Guard helicopter crew to help with the search. "I know that time is of the essence in a search like this, and hopefully the National Guard crew and equipment will help cover more ground quickly," Thompson said. Robert Andraschko, chief deputy sheriff, said a search warrant was used at a dwelling outside Waupaca County to gather telephone records, but that the documents failed to provide information on the girl's whereabouts. One of Cora's cousins, Mary Jones, 12, who lives down the road from her grandmother, said Cora had declined a request from a man in a car who asked her two weeks ago to help him look for a lost golden retriever. Cora's maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Schwirtz, said the family has accepted that the little girl apparently was abducted. "So far, all we've found is the bicycle," Schwirtz said Wednesday. "It's like she vanished... I've watched television and all those children that have disappeared, I've cried and prayed to God for them, and that's what we're doing now. You feel so helpless... but we're doing everything we can." Waupaca County Sheriff William Mork said he remained hopeful about the prospects of finding the young girl. But after 17 years as sheriff, he said each passing hour increased the risk of a bad outcome. "The longer we wait, the worse it looks," he said. |
