Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Search-and-rescue leader Carolyn Shuckerow marks an area to be further researched.

Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Searchers comb a Charlottesville field Saturday looking for clues to Morgan Harrington's disappearance.

Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Gil Harrington, Morgan Harrington's mother, gets a hug at the search party staging area at the Virginia Department of Forestry.

Jeanna Duerscherl | The Roanoke Times

Bob Smither, founder of the Laura Recovery Center for Missing Children, hugs Gil Harrington, the mother of the missing woman, during Saturday's search.

CHARLOTTESVILLE The scene was idyllic -- green fields, white fences, sunshine, a breeze and such quiet that you could hear the hiss of shoes on dry grass.

A beautiful setting for what was a grim task: a search for anything to help tell the story of what happened to 20-year-old Morgan Harrington on the mid-October night the Roanoke County woman disappeared from outside a Metallica concert here.

Six women and 10 men lined up across the edge of the field Saturday and began to walk slowly and methodically, eyes down, scanning left and right and left again. There was a sense of expectation, and a little fear.

"You want to find clues, but fear finding something ... how you don't want it to turn out," said Susan Rohm-Briggs, 40, pausing to choose her words.

Yet, in a search like this, finding nothing is one definition of success.

"We want to be able to go back and say, 'We've looked there and there's nothing there,' " said their volunteer leader, Carolyn Shuckerow, 26, an information technology manager for a McClean defense contractor.

The team was one of dozens sent into the field Saturday on the second day of a massive three-day search for Harrington. It was organized by the Texas-based Laura Recovery Center for Missing Children, which has put together some 90 similar searches since 1998.

A search on Friday by 360 volunteers in 36 teams turned up nothing that proved to be of value to the investigation, but Harrington's mother, Gil, placed value on the elimination of a square mile of area around the John Paul Jones Arena as a place that has now been thoroughly searched.

The search has value beyond finding clues, said Bob Smither, who founded the Laura Recovery Center in memory of his 12-year-old daughter who was abducted and killed.

It both gives the Harrington family hope, and relieves a pent-up desire in the community to help, he said.

Harrington's disappearance has gripped the emotions of both the residents of her hometown and of the place where she went missing.

Olimpia Gocan drove from Roanoke with her husband to join in the search for just that reason. Organizers said Roanoke was very well represented among the searchers.

"We're just trying to do a little more than just pray," she said. "It just feels like a little more of an accomplishment."

Diane Rohm-Dean, a Charlottesville resident out searching Saturday, said anywhere she drives with her 15-year-old daughter, they find themselves asking aloud, "I wonder if they looked there?"

"Every blond-haired girl you see walking down the street, 'Is that her?' " echoed Rohm-Briggs, her sister.

Both hoped to bring some form to their vigilance by joining Saturday's search. The two found themselves in a field next to St Anne's-Belfield School, where Rohm-Dean's daughter is a student -- a juxtaposition Rohm-Dean found unsettling.

They were told to call "Stop!" if they noticed anything that didn't seem to belong. About 20 minutes into their search, George Bowling, a 39-year-old construction worker who had had rotator cuff surgery Friday, called out.

At his feet was a half-eaten dinner roll.

"It's just weird to see a piece of bread in a field," he explained.

Map and timeline

Matt Chittum | The Roanoke Times

Click to see a map documenting the timeline of sightings of Harrington in the hour before she was last seen.

Ongoing coverage

• Follow the search for missing Va. Tech student Morgan Harrington of Roanoke County
• Day One of the search: Large turnout expected in Charlottesville search

Shuckerow used four sticks and a roll of pink tape to make a brightly marked perimeter around the bread for later investigation.

Others found mostly litter.

"Remember, she was wearing a lot of jewelry necklaces and rings," Shuckerow called out.

At the far end of the field, the team delved delicately into a line of cedar trees and brambles.

"This isn't pretty," Shuckerow told them. "It might hurt, but let's focus everywhere."

Nothing.

On the return sweep, Shuckerow tagged some odd depressions in the grass and mud, thinking they could have been made by a woman in heels.

"It's a little boring," Shuckerow told her crew, "but if you find something, it's worth it."

After more than two hours scouring the field and brush, the team found nothing else. The things they marked didn't warrant further investigation by police.

By 1:30 p.m., as the team was finishing up, 55 teams of 10 had already been sent into the field, and 15 had returned.

Smither, of the Laura Recovery Center, said police had investigated a few found items, but deemed them unimportant.

Smither was unconcerned. Nearly every search his group has led has turned up something of value for investigators. And this search will carry on even after today, the last day of the major effort.

Part of the value of a search like this, Smither explained, is that it leaves behind a body of people in the local community who have the training to carry on after the recovery center organizers have gone home.

Currently, two searches in California and Washington are still going on months after getting started, he said.

Harrington's parents said they were moved by the outpouring of help.

"We are givers. To receive in such magnitude is overwhelming," Gil Harrington said.

Three weeks after their daughter disappeared, the couple expressed a clear-eyed view of what success and failure look like in this search.

"The worst scenario is if we don't find her," Dan Harrington said. "There's nothing worse than if there's no closure."

"Before we had this search, I realized we may not have a happy ending," Gil Harrington added. "I hope we have modeled a way of reacting to a crisis in a positive way. That would not be a bad legacy to have."