"There's days that I just want to stay in bed and cry," Jaimee Mendez's sister Alyssa Mendez said.
Two weeks have passed the family of Jaimee Mendez by, and with the elapse of time goes their faith of finding her alive.
"I know that she loved me, as I know that I loved her. I know that she was a great mother to her son and she was a great daughter," her father, Stephen Mendez, said.
Her father was struggling to get the words out when speaking in the past tense now about his youngest daughter.
The 25-year-old Swampscott mother of a young son has not been heard from for two weeks. Relatives maintain she was last with a registered sex offender who was making her nervous.
Police have not commented about that man.
Now two weeks later, candles mark the spot behind the CVS on Eastern Avenue in Lynn, where family members told NECN her sneakers were found in a dumpster.
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Her uncle and aunt are still in disbelief that their niece is gone.
"Jaimee was the flower girl at our wedding. And it's just totally unreal, the whole thing is totally unreal and unbelievable that one day she's there and one day she's not," her aunt, Beatrice Mendez, said.
Officers searching the dense woods in Salem, Swampscott, and Lynn last week did not uncover any trace of Mendez.
State police spent two consecutive days this week at Floating Bridge Pond along Route 107 using divers and side-scan sonar, but found nothing.
With nothing but hope to hang on to came a plea to help from her aunt and uncle.
"Maybe there's somebody out there that knows something. And your coverage might just tweak them enough to feel guilty enough to actually come forward and tell us something that we could use to find Jaimee and bring her home," her uncle, James Burse, said.
"If anyone who has a store or a video camera, check what they have for footage for that night, because it may show that van, it could give some piece of evidence," Beatrice Mendez said.
Her family told NECN police found Jaimee's phone, ID and jacket on Technology Way in Salem. Two days of searching have been organized again for that area. They plan to meet at the Burger King parking lot on Highland Avenue in Salem this Saturday and Sunday at 8 a.m. and noon.
