Vigil held for friends, family of missing Purdue student

Nearly 200 people were in attendance Saturday at Evangelical Community Church at a vigil held for missing Purdue student Wade Steffey.\nSteffey, a Bloomington resident, was last seen in the early hours of Jan. 13 while attending a fraternity party at Purdue. He was reported missing three days later after the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.\nBefore the vigil, a white banner was placed on a table outside the sanctuary area so that friends and family could write messages to the Steffey family.\nRoy Hughes, an ordained pastor, challenged the audience during the vigil to support Dale Steffey and Dawn Adams, Wade's parents.\n"How much can it be for us as the friends or family of Dawn and Dale to be that support," Hughes said. "Let's do it as a group. Let's do it as a community. Let's do it as their family and their friends and help them because they need strength. They need support. They need comfort. They need encouragement in this setting. And we want to help them with that to find Wade," he said.\nAs messages from rabbis and pastors were completed, the crowd was asked to form a circle around the sanctuary area of the church. As the lights were dimmed and candles were lit in a moment of thoughts and prayers, Jonas Schrodt a Bloomington resident sang "Brand New Day" by Van Morrison while playing his guitar.\nShelley Sallee, youth and family camp director of the Monroe County YMCA, met the Steffey family when she instructed Wade Steffey and Adams at Monroe County Martial Arts. Sallee came up with the idea for the vigil. She spoke at the podium with tears in her eyes and a crackled voice as she told Dale Steffey and Dawn Adams not to "hesitate to call" for any help they needed.\n"I knew candles were a symbol of hope and that's what we wanted to portray and it also gives such a sense of community, I felt," Sallee said after the vigil. "To look around and see this circle of hope, I thought it was beautiful. It meant a lot."\nDale Steffey and Dawn Adams held each other in tears as the music played.\n"A lot of what was said up here spoke about the candles and all the people in the community and the support of the community and the good parts of the world and not the scary and bad parts that we have to wrestle with every day," Adams said after the vigil. "That's something to look to and focus on. I think that's going to be, in the days to come, a big help for us," she said.\n"I think it was pretty important for Dawn and Dale to know that there are a bunch of us out here that really care."\nAdams, family and friends said the continuing coverage of media was an important factor to pressure someone who knows what possibly happened in the disappearance of Steffey.\nEric and Marilyn Behrman, who were also in attendance, said it is "so important" the media continue to cover the Steffey story. Their daughter Jill was an IU sophomore who went missing in May 2000 and whose remains were not found for another three years.\n"The (media) needs to know the community and (Steffey's) friends are still very much concerned," Eric Behrman said, "and that people are asking questions and not letting it get to a cold case and it has to be continued on."\nBrooke Baker, Wade Steffey's half sister and an IU student, said she felt that someone knows what happened to her brother and asked for that person to come out and speak.\n"My thoughts and prayers right now are really focused on hoping that the person who knows what happened to Wade will come forward," Baker said. "We really need that to happen for our family"