The woman is a Gamma Phi Beta - I pray this turns out ok.
GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- Dru Sjodin finished her shift at the Victoria's Secret store at 4 p.m. Saturday, then did a little shopping at another store in the Columbia Mall in Grand Forks.
As she walked to her car, the 22-year-old University of North Dakota senior from Pequot Lakes, Minn., used her cell phone to call her boyfriend in the Twin Cities. They talked for about 10 minutes, he later told authorities, until the call ended with a startled cry from Dru:
"Oh, my God! No!"
Nobody has heard from her since.
A few hours later, there was a second brief and voiceless call to her boyfriend, and the signal from her cell phone was tracked to a rural area near Fisher, Minn., 13 miles southeast of Grand Forks.
Throughout the city Monday, people took up her disbelieving cry: "Oh, my God, No!"
Dru SjodinFamily PhotoAssociated Press"We're reeling now," said Mayor Mike Brown, who attended a Monday afternoon news conference, where Grand Forks police called for volunteers for an expanded search today in the Fisher area.
"We're stunned and numbed and sickened," Brown said. "We're a safe community, and things like this don't happen. It strikes at our very core."
Investigators for the U.S. Border Patrol began flying the countryside near Fisher on Monday morning looking for clues in the apparent abduction, which was reported to university police when Sjodin failed to appear at her second job Saturday as a waitress at the El Roco Lounge in Grand Forks.
Friends display a Dru Sjodin poster in Fisher, Minn.Richard SennottStar TribuneGrand Forks police Sgt. Mike Hedlund said investigators found "personal items and shopping things" in Sjodin's car in the shopping mall parking lot that led them to believe she had been abducted.
Investigators focused their search in the Fisher area after learning from technicians at Sprint that a cellular phone tower at a rest stop on Hwy. 2 about 3 miles west of Fisher picked up a signal from Sjodin's phone about 7:40 p.m. Saturday.
"Sprint can sense that the phone was [turned] on within 3 or 4 miles of that tower," said Grand Forks police Lt. Byron Sieber. "They lost the signal at 8 p.m., either because the phone was turned off or the battery went dead."
About 75 local, state and federal law officers worked from a command center at a church in Fisher, fanning out from the tower on foot, horseback, ATVs and in the air with helicopters from the Border Patrol and the Minnesota State Patrol.
"We're looking for the cell phone, clothing -- any physical evidence of any kind," Sieber said.
Hundreds of volunteers are expected to join the search today, marshaling at UND's Engelstad hockey arena in Grand Forks starting at 7:30 a.m. and riding to the Fisher area on buses.
Allan Sjodin, Dru's father, who lives in Minneapolis, spoke briefly at the news conference Monday, pleading, "The person who took her, please release her. We want her home for Thanksgiving. She's a fantastic young lady and we want her back."
Grand Forks police Lt. Dennis Eggebraaten said investigators "have talked several times" with the boyfriend, whom he would not identify. He said he is not considered a suspect.
After the boyfriend received the second call, which lasted "only a few seconds" and involved no conversation, he contacted Dru Sjodin's roommate. When Sjodin didn't arrive for work at the El Roco at 9 p.m., friends contacted UND police.
Grand Forks police joined the investigation Sunday morning, impounding Sjodin's car. Eggebraaten said that there was no sign of blood or a struggle inside the car, but that police were running tests on "various biological samples" taken from it.
He said police don't know whether the car was found where Sjodin had parked it or whether it had been moved.
Sjodin graduated in 2000 from Pequot Lakes High School, where she was an honor student, homecoming queen, a member of the art club and student council and played on the girls' basketball and golf teams. She is 5 feet 5 and weighs 130 pounds. She has frosted blond hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing black slacks, black loafers, a pink and purple V-neck blouse, a black blazer-style jacket and carrying a small black handbag.
"She's very outgoing and intelligent," said Genevieve Diadoo, 22, a UND senior from Burnsville who works with her at the El Roco. Diadoo and other friends gathered at the El Roco on Monday night, trying to understand what happened.
"It's scary," Diadoo said. "It's scary to think that something like this could happen to any of us."
Paulette Pommrehn, a Gamma Phi Beta sorority sister and close friend, said the boyfriend called Sjodin's roommate and other friends over several hours Saturday trying to find out if she was OK.
"There was concern way before it was time for her to clock in at the next job," Pommrehn said.
Her roommate called UND police at 9:40 p.m., about 40 minutes after Sjodin didn't show up for her shift at the El Roco. Police later found Sjodin's car in the mall lot. The driver's-side door was locked, but the passenger-side door was not.
Police Sgt. Hedlund said several "personal items" that Sjodin bought at the mall were found in the car.
Hedlund said investigators have no evidence that Sjodin was stalked or harassed. However, they are checking tips that a man "with a foreign accent" called the Victoria's Secret store several times and asked for her by name.
"My understanding is she was not aware of who this person was," Hedlund said. "But what the nature of the calls was, we don't know. We don't know if they were harassing, or if someone was just trying to contact her. It could be completely unrelated."
A store manager declined to comment Monday.
Diadoo said she wasn't aware of anyone harassing Sjodin at the El Roco.
"All the girls here, we get hit on by guys all the time," she said. "It comes with the job, and we shake it off. But I didn't know of anybody bothering her. There were no phone calls like that."
'A beautiful girl'
As authorities searched near Fisher on Monday, members of Sjodin's family traveled to Grand Forks. Sjodin's father arrived Monday morning along with David and Robert Sutfin, Dru's uncles. Dru's brother, Sven, who is two years older and lives in southern California, also was en route, a family member said.
Dru's boyfriend also was in Grand Forks, while her mother, Linda Walker, stayed at home in Pequot Lakes, hoping to hear good news or her daughter's voice. Sjodin's parents are divorced.
A graphic arts major, Sjodin planned on graduating from UND next summer after traveling to Australia to study, her mother said. She also dreamed of attending art school some day.
"She had a tremendous love for art and was very creative," Walker said.
Walker said she spoke Monday with Patty Wetterling, whose 11-year-old son, Jacob, was abducted on a road near St. Joseph, Minn. in October 1989. The boy hasn't been seen since.
"It's the worst nightmare anybody can ever live through," Linda Walker said. "Pray for me, pray for my daughter. Go hug your kids today."
At Sjodin's UND sorority house, members spent much of the day making posters and pink-and-white ribbons to distribute.
"We're doing all that we can really to find her," Pommrehn said. "We miss her and we're concerned."
Pommrehn said that when she and other sorority members learned of Sjodin's disappearance Saturday, they feared the worst. "Right away, all of us thought 'there's something up,' " she said.
"Sometimes, it'll really hit -- like [Sunday], I was just a wreck," Pommrehn said. "But we're trying to keep a positive outlook on it. Because we know Dru in our hearts so well, because she's so strong, we know she's going to find a way home. She's a beautiful girl."
At Pequot Lakes High School, teachers and administrators said the same.
"She had a tremendous personality," Principal John McDonald said. "And she always had a smile on her face. No matter how you were feeling that day, whenever you'd see her, you'd have a smile on your face, too."
Said Dave Guenther, the school's visual arts instructor, "She's such a neat kid. . . . That's the hard part."
McDonald said he learned of her disappearance Sunday, but kept hoping the news was "an error or mistake." But when he heard it broadcast on TV and radio again and again Monday, it sank in. Guenther said several of Sjodin's former high school classmates drove to Grand Forks on Monday to help look for their friend.
". . . if I could get the time, I'd take off right now, too," he said. "I just feel helpless."
The writers can be reached at
crhaga@startribune.com and
richm@startribune.com.
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