49ers players search for Sierra LaMar

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Prayers out for that girl and her family.

Volunteers, including San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith and other members of the team, will be out again Saturday to look for clues to the whereabouts of Sierra LaMar, the 15-year-old Morgan Hill girl who has been missing for three weeks.

Smith, who took part in a similar search last Saturday, and several other 49ers players will be among dozens who are expected to meet Saturday morning at Burnett Elementary School in Morgan Hill for the latest search related to the March 16 disappearance of LaMar. Santa Clara County sheriff's officials are now treating the case as an abduction.

The 49ers players will be assigned to a team led by Michael Le, whose sister Michelle disappeared in May. Her body was found by volunteer search teams in September, said Marc Klaas, who heads the KlaasKids Foundation and is organizing the search effort. Another volunteer search will take place Wednesday.

"They're motivated by the same emotions that everybody else has. This little girl is out there missing, and it's our duty to recover her and bring her home," said Klaas, whose 12-year-old daughter, Polly, was kidnapped and killed by career criminal Richard Allen Davis in 1993.

Her mother, Marlene LaMar, said she last saw Sierra at home about 6 a.m. before she was to leave for a nearby bus stop at Palm and Dougherty avenues in an unincorporated area near Morgan Hill.

A day later, search teams found her cell phone off the side of the road near Santa Teresa Boulevard and Scheller Avenue, in the opposite direction of the bus stop. The day after that, they found her Juicy Couture-brand purse - the only item known to be with Sierra at the time of her disappearance -near Santa Teresa and Laguna Avenue, a short distance from where her phone was found.

Inside were the neatly folded pair of pants, undergarments and gray San Jose Sharks sweatshirt her family believes she may have been wearing the day she disappeared, authorities said. Also found near the bag were LaMar's schoolbooks, said Sheriff Laurie Smith, adding the purse, clothes and books were found together "wedged between a building and a big cactus" or bush.

On March 29, searchers found an empty handcuff box and used condoms at the dead end of Palm Avenue, within two miles of the teenager's home. Authorities have cautioned that the area where the items were found had been searched at least five times before and that the location is known as a teen hangout spot. Investigators are "anxiously awaiting" the results of forensic testing of those items, Smith said.

Dive teams have searched several reservoirs as well as through various smaller percolation ponds in the Morgan Hill and South County region. On Thursday, a sheriff's search and rescue team and three cadaver dogs combed through areas in San Martin and Gilroy, looking for "possible crime scenes and possible items of evidentiary value," said sheriff's Sgt. Jose Cardoza.

Investigators said they have logged more than 6,000 hours searching for Sierra and evaluated more than 1,000 tips.

Sierra is 5-feet-2 with a thin build, dark hair and an olive complexion.

Anyone with information is asked to call sheriff's investigators at (408) 808-4500 or an anonymous tip line at (408) 808-4431, or text (408) 421-6760. People can also e-mail the sheriff's office at mailto: tips@sheriff.sccgov.org or find more information from the Facebook page, Find Sierra LaMar.

Henry K. Lee is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Twitter: @henryklee. hlee@sfchronicle.com


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