Utahns searching for teen in Wyoming

SWEETWATER COUNTY, Wyo. — As she walks across the sagebrush she prays: "Help me find my son." And another prayer, too: "Please, not here."

It has been more than four months since Gabriela Acevedo has seen her son, who walked out of the house one Friday morning in April and never came back. Diego Orellana Acevedo was 18, a freshman at Salt Lake Community College, and on his way from West Valley City to study at the downtown Salt Lake library. Video surveillance cameras indicate he never walked through the library doors that day.

His car was found the next day, by a trapper, in the middle of dirt and sagebrush a half-hour's drive south of the Little America Hotel in Wyoming. The Sweetwater County Sheriff's Office and the West Valley City Police Department have been unable since then to solve the case.

And so Gabriela walks. This is the third search for Diego; the other two, in May, produced no body and no clues. Saturday's search party was organized by Kiko Cornejo, executive director of the Utah Latino Community Center, Angel Gonzalez of the Chilean Community of Utah, the two law enforcement entities and Sweetwater County Search and Rescue.

But to search for a missing son in the vast grayness of the Wyoming high desert is to both hope for closure and hope to find nothing at all.

The 35 searchers — volunteers from Salt Lake and Green River — gather at dawn at Little America. Gabriela had awakened at 3 a.m., after working till midnight at her cleaning job, and had driven through the fog to Wyoming. About 9 a.m., the searchers fan out in a line and start moving north, walking 25 feet apart as they scan the desert.

Diego could be anywhere here. Or nowhere.

"As searchers we have to believe he's here," explains Neil Koureelas, one of the Sweetwater Search and Rescue volunteers. "But that doesn't mean he is here." In fact, a search with nine wilderness search and rescue dogs in May, five days after Diego's disappearance, found no trace of his scent around the abandoned car, he says.

Diego's Chevy has been examined by the West Valley City Police Department, which found no traces of blood or other body fluids signaling a struggle. Diego's basketball clothes and his cell phone were in the car. But his red backpack was missing. There was still gas in the tank, but the battery was dead. The car was parked out in the open, exposed and yet revealing nothing.