Amber Dubois

Amber Dubois: It has been 22 days since Amber Dubois disappeared, and the desperate search for the straight-A student is in high gear.

More than 400 volunteers are combing 200 square miles of countryside on foot.

The crisis has brought together a fractured family: Amber’s mom, Carrie McGonigle; Amber’s father, Moe Dubois; and Dave Cave, the man Carrie now lives with.

“Every morning she’d wake me up before she left for school and give me a kiss …and tell me she loved me,” Carrie tells “48 Hours Mystery” correspondent Troy Roberts.

“Amber lives at my house. And I come home to her every day. She’s my daughter to me. She’s my baby girl,” says Dave Cave.

It’s the spirit of a special child that keeps their hopes alive.

“My daughter Amber is my sweetheart,” Moe Dubois says. “She’s a little girl who always has a little smirk on her face, teases me all the time … gives me a hard time about my receding hairline. That’s my kid.”

“She loves to read,” adds Carrie. “She has friends at school and stuff, but she doesn’t go to the mall. She hates to shop. She doesn’t wear makeup… she’s a bookworm.”

But as the days pass with no breaks in the case, the stress starts taking a toll on all three parents.

“This is tearing Carrie’s heart out of her,” Dave Cave explains. “She’s just – I hate seeing what it’s doing to her.”

“It consumes you, you know,” Carrie says. “You don’t know where your daughter is, your child is. It just changes your whole, your whole world.”

“I don’t want to make it to a month,” Moe says. “I want a hug tomorrow. I want a hug tonight. I want to see someone call us tonight and say, ‘We’ve got her, she’s coming home.’”

The mystery of Amber Dubois’ disappearance began on the day before Valentines Day, Feb. 13, 2009.

“Amber, she’d been waiting for a year for this day. She’s been into animals since she was still in diapers,” Carrie says. “Her science project is to raise a baby lamb. She was all excited when I left that morning, she’s like, ‘Thanks Mom, I love you so much, thank you for the lamb.’”

Amber was last seen around 7 a.m. just blocks from Escondido High School.

“She was seen by two different parents walking up the street,” Carrie tells Roberts. “She was walking by herself the first time… and the second time, there was a man standing next to her or a kid.” Amber Dubois