Post by LadyBlue on Jun 13, 2012 11:15:56 GMT -5
Seeking Hope: Friends revive case of missing woman
VIRGINIA BEACH
Nearly 12 years ago, Hope Renee Curry, 23, walked to a gas station to use a pay phone. She told her brother, who had just moved into a nearby condo, that she was going to invite a friend over for pizza.
She never came back.
Her family watched and waited. Her friends worried.
Twelve years later, they haven't given up. Recently they've begun a renewed push to find out what happened to Curry. They're hanging banners, planning a vigil, raising money for a billboard, and hoping someone might come forward with answers.
"A lot of times it does fall on the family to get them in the press and keep their name out there," said Betty Brown, a volunteer victim's advocate who recently began helping the group. "We started a Facebook community page for Hope, we have people sharing her information all over the place."
Curry disappeared Nov. 11, 2000. She had attended Green Run High School but never graduated, said Tiffany Limpert, Curry's best friend.
She was young and she got mixed up in some teenage trouble, said Jennifer Limpert, Tiffany's sister-in-law and another of Curry's friends. Just after she disappeared, police charged Curry with drug possession.
It could lead some to think Curry ran away, but her family and friends say that's not possible. She was fighting to get her 9-month-old daughter back from social services, they said, and she never would have given up.
"She was doing everything she could to get her baby," Tiffany Limpert said Monday, hanging a banner at the laundromat on Rosemont and Holland roads where the gas station once stood.
The banner, which shows a smiling Curry wearing hoop earrings next to the word "Missing," is hard to miss. But after more than a decade, what are the odds it could turn up a lead?
Brown said people would be surprised at how often a public push turns up information on an old case. Especially with new technology like the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, she said, those looking for missing people have more tools than ever before.
Officer Jimmy Barnes, a spokesman for Virginia Beach police, said that, in some cases, it takes that kind of time for people who know something to come forward.
Dreama Hogge, Curry's mother, said she won't let her hopes get too high, too fast, but she's thrilled to have help renewing the search for Curry. Not knowing what happened to her daughter has been hard, she said, but maybe this time, there are answers ahead.
"I've been dealing with it through the Lord," Hogge said. "I just turned it over to him, told him, 'If you want me to know what happened, if you feel like it's something I can handle, then bring it on.' "
hamptonroads.com/2012/06/seeking-hope-friends-revive-case-missing-woman
VIRGINIA BEACH
Nearly 12 years ago, Hope Renee Curry, 23, walked to a gas station to use a pay phone. She told her brother, who had just moved into a nearby condo, that she was going to invite a friend over for pizza.
She never came back.
Her family watched and waited. Her friends worried.
Twelve years later, they haven't given up. Recently they've begun a renewed push to find out what happened to Curry. They're hanging banners, planning a vigil, raising money for a billboard, and hoping someone might come forward with answers.
"A lot of times it does fall on the family to get them in the press and keep their name out there," said Betty Brown, a volunteer victim's advocate who recently began helping the group. "We started a Facebook community page for Hope, we have people sharing her information all over the place."
Curry disappeared Nov. 11, 2000. She had attended Green Run High School but never graduated, said Tiffany Limpert, Curry's best friend.
She was young and she got mixed up in some teenage trouble, said Jennifer Limpert, Tiffany's sister-in-law and another of Curry's friends. Just after she disappeared, police charged Curry with drug possession.
It could lead some to think Curry ran away, but her family and friends say that's not possible. She was fighting to get her 9-month-old daughter back from social services, they said, and she never would have given up.
"She was doing everything she could to get her baby," Tiffany Limpert said Monday, hanging a banner at the laundromat on Rosemont and Holland roads where the gas station once stood.
The banner, which shows a smiling Curry wearing hoop earrings next to the word "Missing," is hard to miss. But after more than a decade, what are the odds it could turn up a lead?
Brown said people would be surprised at how often a public push turns up information on an old case. Especially with new technology like the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, she said, those looking for missing people have more tools than ever before.
Officer Jimmy Barnes, a spokesman for Virginia Beach police, said that, in some cases, it takes that kind of time for people who know something to come forward.
Dreama Hogge, Curry's mother, said she won't let her hopes get too high, too fast, but she's thrilled to have help renewing the search for Curry. Not knowing what happened to her daughter has been hard, she said, but maybe this time, there are answers ahead.
"I've been dealing with it through the Lord," Hogge said. "I just turned it over to him, told him, 'If you want me to know what happened, if you feel like it's something I can handle, then bring it on.' "
hamptonroads.com/2012/06/seeking-hope-friends-revive-case-missing-woman