Over 60 volunteers met in Ludington today to lend their plant identification skills to the search for Baby Kate.
They’re looking for a rare combination of plants and soil that investigators took from the shoes of Katherine Phillips' father at the time of the infant's disappearance two years ago.
The volunteers are divided up into five teams that will search through over a dozen locations in northern Mason County through Saturday. In the field, team members line up and proceed forward until someone thinks they’ve identified one of the plants on their laminated cheat-sheet.
Frank Telewski, of Michigan State University, is one of the coordinators of the search. He says this won’t be easy for the volunteers.
“I think in some cases it’s going to be extremely difficult, maybe not even fully possible, but that’s exactly the reason why each team has an expert with them,” says Telewski.
When an expert confirms a sought-after plant, the GPS coordinates are marked. A plant sample is also taken to later be looked at under a microscope.
Rachel Mifsud, a Biology teacher at the University of Michigan, is one of the volunteers. She says she’s happy to finally be able to put her plant identification skills to good use. For her, this is fun and it’s a good networking opportunity with other biologists, but it also strikes a personal chord.
“My daughter’s pregnant," she says. "I’m about to have a grandchild and that’s the first thing that I thought of in my head when I heard about this is I can’t imagine how I would feel,” says Misfud. She hopes her efforts will help to lead to some closure for Baby Kate’s family.
At the end of each day, investigators will also collect soil from the volunteers’ shoes. They’ll use all the data to speculate where they might search next for the body of Katherine Phillips.