Jesse Holland has lived for 14 days on little sleep, fast food and an inner drive to find his 14-year-old daughter, Jesseca, who seems to have vanished from the streets of Las Vegas as one of the approximately 1,200 runaways reported each month in the valley.
Rumors of Jesseca seen by people on the street haunt Holland as he answers his cell phone, hangs posters with his daughter's photo on them and talks to anyone who will listen to him.
Wednesday night's vigil continued the string of long nights spent searching motel, apartment and shopping center parking lots across the Las Vegas Valley for the 5-foot-1, brown-haired, brown-eyed girl who loves to write stories.
Each night's search ends at 2 or 3 or 4 a.m., whenever exhaustion overcomes him. He keeps a flashlight and a baseball bat for protection under his pickup's front seat.
From his truck, Holland trains a pair of binoculars on a downtown motel south of the neon lights of the Fremont Street Experience where people come and go within minutes.
"There's the woman we saw last night," he said, straining to catch every detail of her stroll to a first-floor apartment door.
"That's the same man who walks up and down the sidewalk," Holland said.
But there is no sign of Jesseca.
Three years ago mental health experts at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City diagnosed Jesseca Lynn Holland with bipolar illness and schizophrenic tendencies, Holland said. Her condition requires close monitoring and medication, and he is frustrated that police aren't more actively searching for his daughter, he said.
With about 1,200 children reported as runaways every month in the Las Vegas Valley, Metro Police can't spend their time looking for them, Sgt. Tom Wagner of Metro's missing persons section said.
In this case, because of Jesseca's medical condition, police gave the information to the media and detectives are checking out leads. So far nothing has panned out, Wagner said.
He said police are cooperating with the private investigator the girl's family has hired but police can't release information to him that they wouldn't release to the family.
She is suspected of being in the downtown and Strip areas. Jesse Holland has been canvassing those parts of town, putting up fliers and stopping people on the streets to ask if they have seen his daughter.
Elaine Sinnock of Nevada Child Seekers said her agency has received about 20 leads, which they have passed along to police.
"We've had sightings of her on the Strip, we've had sightings of her downtown, we've had sightings of her in Mojave Valley," she said. A man called and said he had given her a ride to Bullhead City.
Although Jesseca left her group home voluntarily, Nevada Child Seekers is placing more importance on her case because of her alleged mental health disorders.
"Her doctor said she might be suicidal or homicidal," Sinnock said. "Even if she went off willingly with someone she still is considered endangered."
Jesseca's father lives in Spring Creek near Elko in northern Nevada. He works for the Barrick Gold Strike mine as a metallurgist who weighs the value of precious minerals for the mine.
He left his cat and two goldfish at home to weigh the wisps of information about his daughter, who had improved enough on the right combination of medication that she was placed in a Las Vegas home after spending months in a mental health institution in Utah.
After Holland's insurance ran out, he pressed state officials in both Utah and Nevada for a solution. One avenue would have required him to give his daughter up to the state. Instead, Nevada officials placed Jesseca in a group care home.
The home was supposed to be a transition, a bridge to Jesseca's homecoming this spring to her father's house. But she and another girl who was staying at the group home, a 16-year-old, failed to return to the home on April 13.
"I returned from work to two cell phone messages," Holland said. "Jesseca was gone. Jesseca had disappeared."
The other girl eventually returned to the group home, but could not explain where Jesseca went.
Without her medication, Jesseca may not know who she really is, Holland fears.
"I'm willing to throw my life away to find my daughter," Holland said. "I want to find her, I want to give her a chance."
Saturday is Jesseca's 15th birthday.
Holland and his ex-wife have banded together in the search for their daughter, they said.
They spend days napping, calling Metro Police Missing Persons unit, touching base with downtown motel operators, street people, even street cleaners who have reported seeing Jesseca at odd hours, at odd places.
One informant told Holland that his daughter appeared on the steps of the Clark County District Court on Bridger Avenue -- with bruises on her face and her arms-- in the company of a black man nicknamed "MC.".
Holland cannot fathom this other Jesseca.
His daughter loved to play Sims on a Sony Play Station, creating a family, finding a job as part of the game. "She was good at it," Holland said.
She also loved to write stories, one about a princess and another, titled "Bobby Block," about a boy learning about life, asking questions of everyone he met.
"My big question is, my daughter was a 14-year-old child with a mental disorder they could help us with, and now I'm on the streets looking for her," Holland said.
Jesseca had never run away from home.
"In our lifetime, there was one time she left for three hours, but she called from a friend's house," Holland said.
Holland is hoping the private investigator he hired will help him find his daughter.
The private investigator, Gary Wright, has been a street cop in California and Nevada, busted drug lords and prostitutes, done political investigations and has been on the missing girl's case for the past six days.
While Metro may not have the manpower to watch for Jesseca, Wright spends every spare minute from his business, Arbor Group Investigations, searching for the girl.
"We try to do a lot of the surveillance and reporting," Wright said.
"It seems that all the crime is being dropped here in Las Vegas," Wright says, popping a stick of Big Red gum into his mouth and checking his cell phone for messages.
"I wish I had a remedy for this," Wright said. "It's like you're chasing butterflies sometimes."
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