Wayland teenage lifeguard reported missingJul 06, 2008 11:35 PM
WAYLAND —
Two decades after Sarah Pryor went missing in Wayland's woods, detectives last night chased leads as darkness fell on a daylong search for a 16-year-old lifeguard who disappeared after leaving Wayland Swim & Tennis Club yesterday.
As police and the community combed the town for Sarah Cramer, neighbors immediately drew a parallel to the 1985 case of Pryor, a 9-year-old who one day went for a walk behind her Concord Road home and never came back.
Dan Beard, who lives two doors down from Cramer's family on Autumn Lane, grew up in town and remembers the heartache when Pryor disappeared.
Other neighbors also saw the similarities.
"It's just gotten to a point, I think, where the Sarah Pryor sadness has abated somewhat," said Carole LaMond, who lives across Glezen Lane from the swim club. "I know when I first moved in in 1986 it was so heavy in everyone's heart here. It took a long time before people felt easy again."
Police say foul play is not suspected in the case of the brown-eyed Cramer, who left the swim club on her own about 10:30 a.m. yesterday wearing jeans, a black sweatshirt and yellow high-top canvas sneakers, carrying a hot pink and white zebra-print shoulder bag.
Cramer was last seen walking into the wooded conservation land behind the club, headed in the direction of her nearby home, police said.
She is described as 5-foot-3 inches tall, 130 pounds with shoulder length brown hair.
"She's a nice kid and we're all very concerned," Beard said. "We're keeping our fingers crossed."
Melody Winnig, who lives on Glezen Lane at the Weston town line, said it was the buzzing of search helicopters overhead, for hours on end, that really made her heart sink yesterday.
"We've all had teenagers who run off for short periods of time, whether they're angry or they need their space or they're going somewhere without communicating, but there must be more to this story that we don't know."
Said LaMond: "that was what made it scary - that they were bringing out so many resources so quickly."
As police officers from Wayland and surrounding towns, state police, scent-sniffing dogs, fire crews and helicopters searched the area, residents said they have also tried to help look for Cramer.
Both LaMond and Beard said they were told by police not to enter the woods to help search because their scents might confuse or distract the dogs.
"As the afternoon goes on, people are getting more concerned," LaMond said.
"It sounds very mysterious, and it's unsettling of course because you don't know what's going on," said Winnig.
Area departments were on the lookout in their towns, with police dispatchers sending Cramer's description to patrol officers over the radio.
Wayland Police Sgt. Jamie Berger last night released few details about the disappearance, saying just that detectives are on the case.
"We're still following up with all our leads," he said.
A woman who answered the phone at Cramer's 19 Autumn Lane home in the late afternoon said the family was not ready to make a statement.
Managers at the tennis club could not be reached yesterday. A lifeguard who answered the club's phone said nobody was allowed to comment.
Neighbor Diane Schalke was out of town on vacation, but said it was a "wonderful thing" to have received a reverse-911 phone call from police alerting residents that Cramer was missing.
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/multimedia/x1816439916/Wayland-teenage-lifeguard-reported-missing
