They interviewed neighbors, collecting detailed information about everyone living in the rural Hillsborough community. They homed in on the area's convicted sex offenders and exhaustively questioned 23 of them.

As searchers combed the landscape, the men and women of a newly formed child abduction team looked for clues in their interviews.

For Hillsborough County sheriff's Lt. Lyle Roberts, having 25 members of the Child Abduction Response Team searching for Lunde provided peace of mind.

``They took such a heavy workload,'' said Roberts, one of the supervisors of the Lunde search. ``To know that [the interviews] were being done correctly, it was just a tremendous help.''

Missing children investigations can sap a department of its resources. Detectives who normally investigate robberies, rapes and murders are tapped to join the search, as are patrol officers and civilian volunteers.

Detectives' Expertise

The expertise of detectives who investigate cases of missing and abused children becomes crucial. Their skill interviewing youngsters and sex offenders pushes them to the front of the investigation. But few departments have more than a handful of experienced crimes against children detectives.

Time also is a key factor. A U.S. Department of Justice and Washington state study estimated that 74 percent of children murdered by an abductor are killed within three hours of their disappearance.

The activation of the Child Abduction Response Team, or CART, can quickly double or triple the number of experienced detectives working a case as two recent examples show.

Founded by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in February, the team that covers the Tampa Bay area is composed of 71 investigators with extensive experience working missing children cases.

Team members were in St. Petersburg for their first training session when Jessica Lunsford went missing in Homosassa, and CART was first activated. Thirty-one team members spent five days and 1,300 hours aiding Citrus County authorities, FDLE Special Agent Supervisor Ray Velboom said.

A month later, CART was working on the Lunde case. Team members conducted 359 interviews, including those with most of the sex offenders in the area, he said.

The idea for CART came from Orlando agents who wanted to model an abduction response team after squads established to deal with domestic terrorist attacks, Velboom said. He and that other law enforcement officers interviewed said they don't know of any similar programs in other states.

Departments that want to be a part of CART sign a mutual aid agreement allowing its officers to work with FDLE.

Departments pay the cost of their officers' time when the team is activated, with the expectation that if there is an abduction in their jurisdiction, CART will work for them, Velboom said.

To sell the program to agencies, FDLE also agreed that a department's decision to send officers is voluntary, and that CART's activations will be short-term.

During the Lunsford case, for instance, Tampa police were working overtime trying to catch three rapists who had struck in the span of three hours on Feb. 18.

Departments Can Say No

``If your department needs you more, you can decline,'' said Tampa police Capt. Sophia Teague, who oversees detectives investigating sex crimes against children.

While she couldn't send any detectives to Citrus County, she sent them to help search for Lunde.

The morning after CART was activated, Tampa police Detective Tony Zambito was in Ruskin, conducting interviews. The experience convinced him of CART's benefits, he said.

He said the team's strength is in the diversity of its members who have wide-ranging skills, including hostage negotiation and in his case, Spanish.

``Once they found out I spoke Spanish, I was a commodity,'' he said.

He was sent to nearby areas where migrant laborers live, asking about Lunde.

Sgt. David Wyllie, who supervises the detectives working the Lunsford case, said CART's expertise was welcome. ``Your agency may have a child abduction once every 75 years,'' he said. ``You now have people who may have done two or three in the last five years.''

Another person convinced of CART's usefulness is Clearwater police Sgt. Doug Barry.

He recently had been assigned to oversee Clearwater's crimes against children squad when Zachary Bernhardt, 8, disappeared from his mother's apartment in September 2000. Despite an intense search, the boy never was found.

While the searches for Lunsford and Lunde were in rural areas, Bernhardt went missing in an urban area with hundreds of apartments nearby.

``The idea is just phenomenal,'' he said. ``I could have well used the resources of 30 plus investigators'' during the search for Bernhardt.

Their skills, he said, would have given him peace of mind that the investigation was thorough and the interviews wouldn't need to be repeated.

Barry participated in the Lunsford and Lunde searches and said CART's methods are being refined.

No Stone Left Unturned

He said team members learned after the Lunsford case that ``you can't leave any stone unturned.''

Authorities found Lunsford's body about 150 yards from her home. John Evander Couey, a convicted sexual offender who was living, unbeknownst to authorities, within sight of the girl's home has said he killed her, authorities said.

That knowledge stuck with detectives during the search for Lunde, Barry said.

``If we walked away from a house and didn't get a good feeling, we immediately went back,'' Barry said. ``If there wasn't anybody there, we made sure we went back.''

Reporter Anthony McCartney can be reached at (813) 259-7616.