CORVALLIS, Ore. — Police in Corvallis have interviewed about a dozen “persons of interest” in the disappearance of a 19-year-old Brigham Young University student but none can so far be considered a suspect, police Lt. Ron Noble said Thursday.

He also said authorities have fielded more than 500 tips from around the country and are continuing to interview sex offenders in two Oregon counties, but still have no solid leads.

Brooke Wilberger vanished Monday morning from an apartment complex where her sister lives, leaving behind a pair of flip-flops in a parking lot.

“People ask us, how do you feelfi” Greg Wilberger, Brooke’s father, told reporters. “You don’t feel. You don’t think. You can’t have any feelings. You just go forward.”

He said the family has been speaking with the father of Elizabeth Smart, the Utah girl who was abducted for nine months until she was reunited with her family in March 2003, about how to cope with the stress and how to get the word out about Brooke Wilberger’s disappearance.

Authorities in Corvallis also have been in touch with law enforcement officials involved in the Smart case, seeking advice on conducting this investigation, Noble said.

The missing woman’s mother, Cammy Wilberger, said the family is trying to stay positive by praying and by distributing fliers, laminated cards and buttons printed with her daughter’s picture.

They’re also working to set up a Web site to attract more tips.

“We’re still hopeful and we think we’ll have Brooke with us soon,” she said.

Hundreds of volunteers are helping in the search for Wilberger, fanning out as far as four miles in every direction from the apartment complex.

Wilberger’s parents and eldest sister, Shannon, visited some of the searchers Thursday to thank them for looking from dawn to dusk, in the rain, often through dense underbrush, or swampy areas.

One of the searchers, Veneta resident Terry Nelson, wept as she met with the Wilbergers.

“It’s just so hard to see them suffer,” said Nelson, who has known the family for five years.

Wilberger’s parents described their daughter as a devout, studious woman with a sense of fun. Her longtime boyfriend is in Venezuela on a Mormon mission.

Brooke Wilberger had planned to take a “girls only” trip with her mother and sisters to San Francisco this summer, Cammy Wilberger said.

The missing woman is 5 feet, 4 inches tall and weighs about 119 pounds, and has a scar on her right arm from her elbow to her wrist. She has shoulder-length blond hair and blue eyes, and was last seen wearing a gray Brigham Young University sweat shirt, jeans, small hoop earrings and a ring with the initials “CTR” engraved on it, a common Mormon phrase that stands for “choose the right.”

Wilberger’s purse, keys and other personal items had been left in her sister’s Corvallis apartment and the missing woman’s car was still in the parking lot.

Wilberger was cleaning the bulb covers of the tall lamps that line the complex’s parking lot Monday morning when her sister, Stephani Hansen, left to drop off her child at preschool. When Hansen returned about an hour and a half later, her sister was gone, she said.

Wilberger graduated last year from Elmira High School near Eugene, where she played soccer and ran track. Wilberger has three sisters and two brothers.

She has been studying speech pathology at BYU.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D3.

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