Search for Steffey on Saturday ends with no clues

WEST LAFAYETTE -- Hundreds of volunteers concluded their Saturday search for missing Purdue University student Wade Steffey early because of freezing temperatures and high winds.\nSearchers, including those on horses, all-terrain vehicles and foot, trekked through brush and wooded areas along the Wabash River while temperatures were in the low teens with subzero wind chill.\nDale Steffey, Wade's father, joined the foot search with his brother Rex Steffey by his side. Dale Steffey later told reporters at a press conference what his motivation was in the search for his son. \n"Today it's anger, actually," Steffey said. "I've come to learn one of the five stages of grief. It's a pretty powerful feeling to run on."\nSteffey, during his search, looked at a tall tree that seemed to look hollow and was cut in half, then questioned if he should climb it to look inside. \n"I'm trying to decide if someone could have pulled themselves up inside there," he said.\nOnce he and his brother felt they searched everywhere they could, they walked back to the area alongside of Route 231 where their car was parked and drove back to the volunteer center. Dale Steffey continued to search on the way back, breaking thin ice with his boots to see if anything was underneath.\n"You never know," he said.\nWhile walking back, Steffey's older brother Rex explained what it was like for him to go back without finding anything significant.\n"It's frustrating," he said. "All the search is (frustrating) so far until we find a clue or something. This is an awful big area, not just this but the whole vicinity is a really large place."\nBack in the End Zone Cafe, also named the Wade Steffey Volunteer Center, almost 300 searchers came group by group to sign and document where they searched and if they found anything. \nAnna Hirst, a coordinator of the volunteer center, was holding the clipboard where volunteers were signing in.\n"They've been to the areas where the police department have directed them to," Hirst said. "Some have been on ATV, a lot of them have been on foot," she said.\nTravis Merkel, an Ivy Tech student, who said this was his first time volunteering to search, said he was motivated to join the effort because he saw the media reports and kept telling himself he would find some time to come out to help. He said he searched on foot for almost two hours.\n"You never know what you're looking for or what you're going to find out there," Merkel said. "When I was out there I was trying to go through any brush piles and in the back of my mind I thought, 'I might find a body out here.'"\nBefore the press conference, Tippecanoe County Sheriff Tracy Brown said while it would be impossible to search the hundreds of miles in the county, the Sheriff's department was there to help.\n"We're dealing with very, very cold temperatures and the flooded Wabash River with a lot of ice in it," Brown said. "That was our concern so that everyone could conduct their search and come back safe."\nWade's mother Dawn Adams emphasized that while they were feeling anger, they weren't blaming anyone and just wanted their son back.\n"We need to find him," she said, clutching her heart. "Any condition that he is in, we need to find him. It's not better for us not to know."\nWhile one of the main search areas is the Wabash River, Brown said that's not because of any particular leads in the case.\n"There's no specific information why. But, Mr. (Wade) Steffey has vanished," Brown said. "We don't know where he's at, so you want to start ruling places out."\nWhile the search found no new evidence according to numerous police officials, Capt. Tim Potts of Purdue University Police Department said it would not be the final search.\n"We didn't get all the area that we had hoped to search," Potts said. "It's not going to stop us. We're going to continue until we get all those areas searched."\nPotts remained optimistic about finding Steffey and said he would not be calling off future searches.\n"I don't see that point coming," he said. "The resolve is high with this community that we are going to find something that's going to lead us to bring Wade home."\nA prayer vigil for Wade Steffey will be held Saturday at Evangelical Community Church, 503 S. High Street in Bloomington. The vigil will take place at 7:30 p.m.