Ninety first responders lined up side-by-side at the front gates of Tallahassee’s Mission San Luis Tuesday to begin an in-depth search for 12-year-old missing girl Lori Paige.
Tallahassee police officers and firefighters stretched out their arms, ensuring they were arms-length apart, before TPD Chief Lawrence Revell commanded them to begin what is known as a “grid search.”
They teamed up to comb through the 64 acres between the museum’s grounds to the city’s San Luis Mission Park in hopes of uncovering any details that would lead them to Paige, who has now been missing for eight months.
“Going this long without any valuable leads makes us want to come back to the last place she was seen and do everything that we can to make sure,” TPD spokesperson Alicia Hill said.
Detectives have already searched this area five times before, Hill said, but this time they have more people and more resources that might help them find something.
Hill said the fire department pre-mapped the area, and search team members were using iPads to mark “anything that they see that could potentially be of evidentiary value” on that map. Once the entire area is searched, forensics specialists will determine whether what was marked pertains to Lori’s case.
When conducting a grid search, officers and firefighters walk in a straight line from wherever they start to ensure someone has checked all of the determined area. TPD and TFD personnel marched through thick underbrush and woods and called out to each other via walkie-talkies.
The first responders were equipped with chainsaws, hand pruners and clippers to cut through the brush. Not even five minutes into the search, the roars of chainsaws rang out as the search team battled with the landscape and wildlife — even having to pull ticks off one another as they emerged from the dense woods.
The landscape makes the search difficult, but Mission San Luis is a state historical site that is protected, so investigators can’t dig and have to be mindful of where they are on the property and leave things as they find them, Hill said.
Other efforts are in the works to increase awareness and get the community’s help. TPD is working with the FBI to get billboards put in Tallahassee as well as Jacksonville, and possibly even outside the state in Thomasville, Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee, Hill said.
“The family wants answers,” Hill said. “And we’re going to do everything that we can to provide them.”
The search comes as the FBI offers a $15,000 reward “for information leading to the recovery of Lori Paige.”
If you have any information concerning this person, please contact the FBI’s Jacksonville Field Office at (904) 248-7000, or the Tallahassee Police Department at (850) 891-4200.
Elena Barrera can be reached at ebarrera@tallahassee.com. Follow her on X: @elenabarreraaa.