If you follow the national news, you probably know that a University of Wisconsin student disappeared last Saturday. She was one of about 100,000 missing persons in the country, but managed to become an important news item on at least two networks by the beginning of the week.

I saw a news van from St. Paul, MN, parked outside her apartment building yesterday around 1:00 and took a picture of it so I could do a post about watching this local story go national from the inside. For some reason my spycam didn't actually capture the picture, but it didn't matter: She was found right around the time I was passing the truck.

Emily and I were on our way home when we heard something about a situation with a gunman near the city's southside beltline freeway. At the end of the report the announcer said, "Audrey Seiler something something;" it was staticky and we couldn't quite hear. When we got home, three of the local network affiliates had live video from a WITI (Milwaukee's Fox affiliate) helicopter. Police (and a rambunctious but seemingly unfocused police dog) were searching the woods near the Alliant Energy Center. They stayed with basically uninterrupted, blanket coverage for a couple hours, eventually taking a couple commercial breaks before leaving for the network news at 5:30; needless to say, the networks also recapped the story.

I think this was the first time I saw such coverage since the Day Everything Changed. While WMTV reporter (and occasional anchor) Mike McKinney kept calling it a "miracle," others were actually questioning why this case had become such a spectacle when, for instance, the missing young man from the suburb of Sun Prairie had gone basically unnoticed. What really got my attention, though, was the absolutely nonsensical nature of the story itself.

Audrey Seiler, the missing person in question, was discovered just walking around in the marshy area between the arena grounds and Lake Monona, about two miles from where she was last seen. She was dehydrated and cold but otherwise fine. Her description of her abductor was extremely vague and included neither hair nor eye color. The circumstances of her disappearance are just as strange. She left her apartment at about 2:30 in the morning without a coat, her cellphone or her keys. Surveillance footage shows her waiting around by the front door before leaving.

Adding to the weirdness, in February she was struck unconscious from behind and came to in a secluded area a block away, having been neither robbed nor sexually assaulted. Family and friends indicate that, since then, she never went anywhere alone or at all into situations that seemed unsafe.

Police do not appear to have found any evidence related to her abductor. Something is missing.