https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...m/71142942007/

Her sister and nephew disappeared 21 years ago. Her tenacity got the case a new look.

For two decades Ramsbottom and her family have traveled to Valdosta, a small south Georgia city just north of the Florida state line. They come to commemorate Oct. 14, 2002, the day Paula and Brandon Wade were reported missing. Paula was 25 and her boy was 3.

Paula, a manager at Sam?s Club, didn?t show up for work that day, the first day she had missed in five years. A search of her apartment found neither mother nor child, only Paula?s car keys, wallet, purse and glasses, without which she was nearly blind. The only thing missing was Brandon?s car seat.

Investigators scoured the apartment complex but found no signs of foul play. Detectives questioned people of interest, including Paula?s estranged husband, who was in the military and had moved out of state, but none of the interviews led anywhere. No one has been named a suspect or arrested in connection with Paula and Brandon's disappearance.
But Paula?s family never gave up. Along with the annual Valdosta pilgrimage to keep up interest in the case, Ramsbottom has spent her evenings on John and Jane Doe websites, spreading the word on true crime social media pages and hounding the local police department for new information.

The decadeslong effort paid off in August, when the FBI and the Valdosta Police Department announced ?a new push to find answers.?

For the first time, the federal agency placed Paula and Brandon on its public missing persons list with images of what they might look like today. The Valdosta Police Department assigned a new detective to the case to reexamine evidence and search for new leads.