A missing California coffee shop owner’s husband is revealing new details in the six-month search for his wife — including using drones to hunt for clues as the desperate search continues. Chris Hillyard said investigators and supporters are zeroing in on areas where Amy Hillyard liked to hike and walk, using aerial imagery to search for any shred of evidence.
Amy, 52, co-owner of Farley’s Coffee in San Francisco, was last seen on March 25 walking her dog near the 500 block of Radnor Road in Oakland. Now, after six months without answers, her family is still clinging to a “glimmer of hope.”
“The private investigator who’s worked on missing persons cases across the country called Amy’s disappearance one of the most perplexing cases he’s ever worked on,” Chris Hillyard said in a video marking the six-month anniversary of her disappearance.
That investigator, Steve Fischer, recently led a “deep forensics dive” into Amy’s devices and apps, uncovering five hiking routes that investigators didn’t previously know about.
Fischer, who was hired by Amy’s family, told SFGate that investigators spent two days combing through her devices.
They discovered that the day before she vanished, Amy spent about 30 minutes using Chrome to look at eight different hiking routes running from the Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park area in Oakland toward Berkeley.
Investigators had previously identified three of those routes and searched them.
The digital discovery revealed five more — and a small team planned to begin searching the newly identified routes Sunday.
The trails are all about 5 miles from Amy’s home, and Fischer told SFGate she had hiked all but one of them before.
“These are areas that were quite frankly not on our radar,” Fischer told the outlet.
Some of the routes are lengthy, he said, stretching roughly 6 1/2 to 7 miles.
Fischer also said that entries in Amy’s journal indicated hiking was one of the ways she managed her anxiety.
Now, investigators are concentrating on specific areas and using drones to search places Amy knew and enjoyed, according to her husband.
“Still we all keep trying and every day we wake up with a glimmer of hope that today will the day that brings some piece of information that offers an answer to Amy’s whereabouts,” Chris Hillyard said.
Amy is described as standing 5-foot-4 and weighing about 120 pounds, with blonde hair and hazel eyes. She is considered at risk because of a medical condition.
Her husband has said Amy left her cellphone at home before vanishing.
A $25,000 reward remains in effect for information about her disappearance.
Her friends and family have also launched Bringamyhome.com, where supporters can follow the search and learn how to help.
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