Family asks community to help find missing daughter

Danielle van Dam

SAN DIEGO, California (CNN) -- Volunteers fanned out and investigators combed a wider search area early Saturday in their effort to find 7-year-old Danielle van Dam, discovered missing a week ago from her San Diego, California, home.

Her parents appealed to the San Diego community to help look for Danielle. Dawn Davis, of a Texas-based child recovery center, relayed the parents' message, asking residents to join a search Friday.

"We want to focus on Danielle, we want to bring Danielle home," Davis said, adding volunteers are needed to cover "targeted areas" in looking for the girl.

RESOURCES Daniellemissing.com

Davis arrived in the San Diego area earlier this week after a friend of the van Dams asked her organization, the Laura Recovery Center Foundation, to coordinate a civilian search. She said the civilian effort, which began Friday, is an attempt to make use of all possible resources.

"The family realizes that law enforcement is doing their job and are limited in manpower," Davis said, noting the volunteers are communicating with San Diego police. "When they call for volunteers, the manpower increases by that many."

A spokeswoman for the San Diego Police Department said, "They're certainly welcome to do that on their own."

Danielle has been missing since last Saturday, when her mother went to wake her in her second-floor bedroom and found her gone. The second-grader was last seen Friday night by her father.

Police are treating the girl's disappearance as a kidnapping.

Davis said the civilian search would be centered around the van Dams' home, where she was last seen, and may include parts of the Imperial County desert, about 80 miles east of San Diego. Volunteers have already searched along the roadsides, Davis said.

Brenda and Damon van Dam have held several news conferences and appeared on television shows in an effort to help recover their daughter.

Danielle's father made another plea to reporters Friday to continue circulating information and pictures of his daughter.

When asked how the family was coping, he said, "We're barely getting by."

Damon and Brenda van Dam

A team of 30 investigators spent Thursday searching a remote area of the Imperial County desert after learning that a motor home owned by a neighbor whom police have interviewed became stuck in a sand dune the day van Dam was reported missing.

Dan Conklin, who operates a tow service in the area, told CNN he spent several hours Saturday pulling the motor home out of sand.

Conklin was contacted by investigators early in the week without knowledge of van Dam's disappearance, he said. "This area is not suitable for camping or recreation and I was astounded to find an RV in the middle of open sand dunes."

A helicopter survey Friday over the area "did not turn up anything new," San Diego police spokesman David Cohen said in a statement. Investigators searched an area of the desert where the neighbor told police he spent the weekend.

The man hired a lawyer Thursday.

After the search, Cohen said, detectives spoke with the man at his home, just two doors down from the van Dams. Cohen would not release details of that meeting.

The neighbor has been questioned at length by police, had his house searched, and had the motor home and an SUV impounded.

Tuesday, San Diego Police Lt. Jim Collins told reporters: "We're looking at him. He is a suspect, but there are other potential suspects that we're taking a look at, too.

"He's been extremely cooperative with us," Collins said. "We have been focusing on him, but I'm not going to call him a prime suspect or anything else at this point."

The van Dams said the man lives two doors down from them and is merely a neighborhood acquaintance they have waved to on occasion.

This weekend, the van Dams had planned to take a trip to Italy with their daughter. Their last photograph of her is the passport picture they snapped shortly before she disappeared sometime Friday night.

The parents have said there was a "breach" into their home around that time. "There was an open door in the house," Damon van Dam said.

"There was a breach into our house, and that's all we're allowed to say," Brenda van Dam said.

According to previous statements from the police and the parents, Brenda van Dam came home at 2 a.m. Saturday and noticed a blinking light on the burglar alarm and a door unlocked. An outside gate was also found open, the parents said.

The parents have taken and passed polygraph tests -- which they said they were glad to do -- and police have searched their home.

Danielle is described as 4 feet tall, weighing 58 pounds with shoulder-length dark blond hair. She may be wearing light blue pajamas with small flowers.