News Photo by Julie Riddle At the Michigan State Police-Alpena Post on Tuesday, Detective Anthony Utt displays binders that hold some of the paperwork gathered during a police investigation of the disappearance of Lisa Knight, of Ossineke. Two tall tubes hold rolled-up charts and timelines created during the investigation.

ALPENA — Ten years ago, Lisa Knight didn’t show up for an appointment with a friend.

A decade later, police are still searching for the then-29-year-old Ossineke woman, hoping a tip will lead them to information that will bring long-awaited peace to Knight’s waiting family and friends.

For police, missing persons searches require hours and months and, sometimes, years of probing every lead and following every tip, hoping one of them will help officers bring the missing person home.

Ten years may pass, but police will not stop looking for a missing person, said Sgt. Jim Lively, detective at the Michigan State Police-Alpena Post.

“We never lose hope,” Lively said. “We’re always looking for that one bit of information that’s going to help us solve the case or find Lisa.”

‘PEOPLE OVER PROPERTY’

Police still receive tips about the possible whereabouts of Knight, last seen on June 8, 2012 at the home of Lloyd Frey, Knight’s ex-husband.

Those tips come less often these days, though, said Sgt. Anthony Utt, also a detective at the MSP Alpena Post.

Still, police follow every lead in the Knight case, as they would for any missing person, he said.

The post’s detectives are currently investigating homicides, arsons, embezzlements, child pornography possession, and sexual assaults, Lively said.

Those cases, however important, would all instantly be put aside if someone needed police to help them find a missing person, said Utt.

“We’ll put people over property every time,” Lively said.

MOVING SLOWLY

A missing person investigation moves slowly, with detectives sometimes diving into rabbit holes only to come up empty-handed.

Tipsters in the Knight investigation have kept detectives on the move over the years, offering possible sightings in other towns and states.

At first, Lively said, Knight’s family assumed she had chosen to disappear for a time, as she had done in the past.

Once family and police realized her prolonged absence was suspicious, detectives launched a full investigation, Lively said. They called anyone connected to Knight, knocked on doors, learned her habits, traced social media mentions, and collated data into comprehensible reports that created a picture of Knight’s life and last known movements.

They filed search warrants for metadata from search engine companies notorious for slow response times that sometimes kept police waiting a year for information.

Recently, as online companies tighten rules in an effort to protect customers, police have an even more difficult time gathering information that could help them find a missing person, Utt said.

‘STILL A JOB TO DO’

About five years after Knight disappeared, the MSP formed a task force to concentrate on her case, hoping looking at existing information from a fresh perspective would help them find her.

Lively, who served on the task force, said the several-month investigative push led to some new phone calls and additional information but nothing that got them closer to finding the missing woman.

Long-term missing person searches wear on the officers involved in the investigation, and a search that results in a tragic ending — like the discoveries of two bodies last summer after police searched for missing Alpena teenager Brynn Bills and Alpena woman Abby Hill — is emotionally draining, Utt said.

“But, at the end of the day, we still have a job to do,” shifting focus from a missing person investigation to a death investigation, he said.

Most missing person searches never make the news because they end quickly and happily, Lively said.

Throughout the year, the public calls on police to locate runaways or children or elderly adults who have wandered off.

Most missing people police find in short order, and others return home on their own, Lively said.

When police do help bring home a missing person, “There’s no time to sit back and indulge in your success,” Lively said. “Sad to say, there will be another missing young person soon enough.”

‘NOT GOING TO STOP’

Ongoing investigations like the search for Knight require pecking away at bits and pieces of information, looking for that one missing piece of the puzzle that will make it all make sense — a piece they may have to wait years to find, Lively said.

Alongside rolled-up charts and timelines, five-inch stacks of paper fill oversized binders in Lively’s office, a papertrail of the 10-year investigation that is not yet complete.

“Lisa’s not a file,” Utt said. “Lisa’s a file cabinet.”

Police will not stop collecting information about the missing Ossineke woman until they find her or find out what happened to her, Lively said.

He doesn’t think police will find her alive.

Disappearing for a decade, with her name, photograph, and missing-person status distributed across the country, would require self-disguising skills few people possess.

Plus, Lively said, he doesn’t think Knight would let her family go through such a long period of uncertainty if she could tell them why she disappeared.

“Do I want her to be alive? Absolutely,” Lively said. “I would love that.”

Police still want tips from anyone with information about Knight, even information that seems insignificant.

The detectives believe they will, eventually, solve the mystery of Knight’s disappearance.

“There’s a missing young lady out there,” Lively said. “We want to find Lisa and bring closure to the family, and we’re not going to stop until we do.”

Police consider Frey a person of interest in Knight’s disappearance. Searches at his property, including searches with cadaver dogs and probes of a section of cement that Frey laid around the time Knight went missing, turned up no evidence police could use to explain her absence.

Anyone with information about Knight should contact the Michigan State Police-Alpena Post at 989-354-4101.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693 or jriddle@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jriddleX.