By Helen Anders and Patrick Beach

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Published: 7:37 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 8, 2012

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Tuesday will mark the 10th year since 19-year-old Rachel Cooke went for a run near her Georgetown home and never returned. Her parents’ hearts still pound when the phone rings.

When their daughter, who ran cross country and hoped to someday start her own fashion line, first disappeared, that ringing phone kindled hope. Now, it provokes dread.

“The psychics keep calling,” Robert Cooke, 57, said in a phone call from his home near Albany, N.Y., where he now works as a software engineer. “They’re convinced they know this or that.”

“Everybody has their own feelings about what happened, like it was near water or something. Unless they have specific information, I’m not interested,” said Janet Cooke, 55, who still lives in Georgetown, though not in the home the Cookes had when Rachel was with them. The Cookes divorced and sold that house a few years after Rachel vanished.

It’s not just psychics who call the Cookes. Anytime bones are found in Williamson County, their phones ring. Many of the unsettling calls come from the media.

“Somebody called me when they found that skull at the lake,” Janet Cooke said, referring to a skull found in Lake Georgetown in October that was quickly determined to be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. “It really caught me off guard.”

The Williamson County sheriff’s office still gets calls, too, but no good leads.

“We still get tips, and all those tips are followed up on,” Sgt. John Foster said. “We don’t have any solid good leads about her disappearance. All of our leads have been exhausted. We’ve had hundreds who’ve worked on the case, assisted on the case or helped search for Rachel.”

Cooke family members want desperately to know what happened. In the beginning, when searches with dogs, a helicopter and people on horseback turned up nothing, the family did talk to psychics — they’d grasp at any straw — but the tips led nowhere, and they’re tired of hearing vague clues. The person they want on the other end of that phone is someone who really knows something, and they’re convinced such a person exists. So is Foster.

“We firmly believe somebody out there does know what happened to her,” he said. “I wish the day would come that I could announce: ‘We’ve found her, and we’ve made an arrest in her disappearance.'”

Elaine Cooke Hettenhausen and Diane Cooke, Robert Cooke’s sisters, have a fat notebook filled with fliers from the various events publicizing Rachel’s disappearance. Most feature a photo of a smiling Rachel that was cropped out of a larger photo taken with her cousins sitting on the couch in her home on Christmas Day 2001.

The fliers advertise a $50,000 reward that’s still on the table. Still hoping for information, the sisters, who live in Austin, take every opportunity to talk about their missing niece. They’ve printed posters and T-shirts. The family also maintains a website, rachelcookesearch.org.

“Somewhere, somebody knows something,” Janet Cooke said. “We need to keep vigilant. You don’t give up. A lot of people say, ‘Go on with your life.’ And I am, but that doesn’t make it go away.”

The sheriff’s Victim Assistance Program is holding an event Sunday at the Georgetown Community Center so the family can thank those who have helped in the search over the years. The gathering also will put Rachel’s name back on people’s radar.

Family members struggle when they talk about that event. Do they call it a ceremony? A memorial?

“Do we say, ‘Rachel is’ or ‘Rachel was’?” Diane Cooke mused, looking away as tears filled her eyes.

“I believe she’s been dead from about the time she disappeared,” Hettenhausen said. Both of Rachel Cooke’s parents agree, but they haven’t dismissed hope.

“Stranger things have happened,” Janet Cooke said, “but I need to keep perspective. It’s been 10 years.”

As other long-lost young women have turned up alive in the past few years — Elizabeth Smart, Jaycee Dugard — the Cooke family has had no news, good or bad.

“We don’t really know anymore than we knew 10 years ago,” Robert Cooke said.

In 2006, convicted murderer Michael Moore told authorities he killed Rachel Cooke, but he recanted and backed out of a plea agreement. The family now doesn’t think Moore killed her, Hettenhausen said. They think someone who knew her might have been the culprit.

The sheriff’s department still considers the case open, Hettenhausen said, but the family is frustrated that many people think the case is solved and don’t give any thought to Rachel anymore.