Missing Girl’s Footprints Lead Nowhere as Do the Clues : Washington: A mother of four moved her family from the slums of Tacoma to a sylvan valley. It was from there that one daughter simply vanished.

Dana Davis had high hopes when she moved her four children out of the slums of Tacoma to the remote Aeneas Valley.

Here, they would be nearly 20 miles away from the closest town.

Here, they would be out of range of the rampant violence and drugs of the Tacoma public housing development where they had lived.

But no place is immune from tragedy.

At 6 p.m. on Sept. 17, her 9-year-old daughter, Penny, told a brother that she was going for a walk. She hasn’t been seen since, and a thorough police search has turned up almost nothing.

“A country atmosphere is every mother’s dream for her children,” Davis said. “I can’t believe that this could happen here.”

Did she run away? “She’s not that kind of kid,” said her mother.

Could she have been a victim of an accident?

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“We don’t believe it’s possible that she fell down and got hurt and was out there. We searched that area a little too well for that,” even using “cadaver dogs” trained to seek out corpses, said Okanogan County Undersheriff Mike Murray.

They found footprints on the first search leading to the intersection of Aeneas Valley Road and Patterson Creek Road, an intersection in the middle of nowhere, with fields all around and forests in the background.

And nothing more since.

“That’s one of the frustrating things about this case, we haven’t had any breaks. But we just keep pounding away at it,” Murray said.

Davis thinks Penny was kidnaped, picked up by a passing car. Murray refused to speculate, and wouldn’t say whether authorities think she is alive.

“We’re trying to keep this as open-minded as we can,” Murray said.

The day she vanished, Penny had been fighting with her friend, Paige. She told her brother Patric, 7, and Paige that she was going for a walk.

“She’s the kind of kid when she’s really feeling frustrated, she’ll walk away from the situation and go hide for a while. Walk away and go think,” Davis said.

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“She’d basically play hide and seek with the other kids and don’t tell them she’s playing hide and seek. This is her explanation for it: ‘Well, I was hiding to see if you guys could find me. .’

“So I wasn’t worried at first,” Davis said.

Paige and Patric came back to the house about 6:30 p.m., but Davis didn’t start to worry until Penny didn’t answer when called around 7 p.m.

That’s when the search started. Davis first went to neighbors up and down the road to see if they had seen the child. As it started to get dark, she began to search by horseback with a flashlight.

At 11 p.m., she realized she wasn’t going to find Penny without help, so she made the 20-mile drive into Tonasket to get the police.

Murray said it was possible that Penny ran away--she apparently told Paige that she was going to. But most runaways are “found in a week, seen by the locals and whatnot. That did not happen here. We’re concerned about that. The whole time she’s been missing, we have had one sighting.”

A woman told police she saw Penny in Wenatchee in October, but nothing has come of that tip, Murray said.

Davis, who lives on welfare and is separated from her husband, moved her children to Okanogan County in July, 1993. She saw the property listed in a free advertising bulletin and bought the shack and 20 surrounding acres for $1,000 down and small monthly payments.

“I lived in Hilltop (a Tacoma neighborhood),” Davis said. “I was terrified for these guys being shot. I was terrified for these guys from being kidnaped. I was terrified for them just going to school. Drugs on the street right by the school, and drug pushers--third-grade drug pushers--in the school.”

So, instead, she and her family sit in rural isolation, gripped by fear.

“We keep talking about when Penny comes home. Not when we find her, but when she comes home. I refuse to concede to the idea that they’ll find her dead body. No way. God’s a more merciful God than that. If I concede to that idea, then we’ll find her dead body,” Davis said.

“Through all my fear, I have moments of the most unbelievable peace. It’s like I know she’s OK,” Davis said softly. “Through all my moments of fear, through all my moments of terror. Call it my strength and belief in God, but I know she’ll come back.”