Search Scaled Back for Missing Teen Shabnam Ahmadyar

Elk Grove police are scaling back their search for after a major push over the weekend that saw more than 100 volunteers knocking on doors in the Hood-Franklin area.

After finding clothes belonging to the 15-year-old on a boat ramp along the Sacramento River, police say they are focusing their efforts on the river while remaining open to the possibility that Ahmadyar is alive and has taken shelter somewhere in the area.

"For the sake of her family, we would like to hold out hope that she went in, then came out," said spokesperson Christopher Trim. "But we don't have any information that puts her outside the area of the river. You would think if a 15-year-old was walking up the road wet, somebody would have seen her."

Ahmadyar, who police say suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, left her home on Chamberlin Circle Friday afternoon without identification or medication, setting off a large-scale search by the police department, other local agencies, the U.S. Coast Guard and the California Air National Guard.

Searchers contacted nearby residents in person and using the Reverse 911 emergency phone alert system, Trim said.

"Our best hope of finding her would have been Sunday," he said.

Trim said officers would continue searching the area around the boat dock near 10900 River Road Monday, and the department hoped to borrow a helicopter from another agency to patrol the river.

If Ahmadyar did go into the river, he said, she could have traveled anywhere from 100 yards to half a mile, and natural factors outside the department's control could complicate the search.

"From the family's standpoint it's going to be a very troubling period of not knowing," he said.

Trim added that investigators had not received any indication of an abduction or other foul play, and that while police were scaling back the search, they were not giving up.

"As long as she's missing, it's still going to be an active case," he said. "We won't close it until we've found her."

Shabnam Ahmadyar is Middle Eastern, about 5'5" and 125 pounds with black hair and brown eyes, according to police. Anyone with information about her whereabouts can call (916) 691-5246.