It's been 2 weeks since 19-year-old Aniah Blanchard of Homewood was last seen in Auburn. Tuesday marked Day 1 of a big development in the search, help from the non-profit Texas Equusearch.
Founder Tim Miller has a heart for finding missing persons because his own daughter was abducted and murdered. His team mapped out the area yesterday, and today started to plan the search between Auburn and Montgomery.
Since Aniah Blanchard's disappearance, students in the area are approaching situations with eyes wide open... Texas Equusearch is doing the same.
"And we've got a lot of area to search so we know this is process of elimination, we've got a lot of things to eliminate and hopefully we can bring this to some type of a close," says Miller.
His team has worked on a number of high profile cases, like the search for Natalie Holloway. They went to Aruba 9 times. In Aniah's case, Miller says they'll stay as long as he feels they're being productive.
"We know if something happened, the sooner she's found, the better chance there is to determine several things, the better chance there is that possibly be there and an investigation will move forward. So, it's not a place I want to be, but I didn't choose what I'm doing, it chose me," says Miller.
Day 1 for the team meant surveying the area and putting a search and rescue plan in place.
"I'm optimistic that we're going to get her located and I stay optimistic on every search that we do. We've been in 38 states, 10 different countries, we've had a lot of success, we've learned a lot of stuff over the years, gained a lot of really neat resources, but we're only as good as our next search and Aniah is our next search," he says.
Miller says they have 50 plus miles of terrain to cover from Auburn to Montgomery, their resources range from horse and rider teams to foot searchers and ATVS. The people in the area right now have come from 5 different states to help find Aniah.