Elaine Runyan-Simmons remembers looking at the playground sandbox, "knowing little Rachael was just playing there."
She remembers seeing a box of candy still lying in the sand where her 3-year-old daughter was sitting and the penny she had put inside the box.
"I never forget these little things," she said.
This Sunday marks the 25th anniversary of the day someone grabbed Rachael Runyan while she was playing in a Sunset park with her brother in 1982. Her body was found near a creek bed north of Mountain Green nearly a month later. No one has ever been arrested in the case.
In 2002, Utah announced the formation of the Rachael Alert named after the little girl. A year later the name was changed to the Amber Alert so the name would conform with alert systems in the rest of the nation to avoid confusion.
Sunday, Elaine Runyan-Simmons will return to the park where her daughter was kidnapped, a place she has passed several times over the years in the course of her daily travels.
"I've had to pass it a lot. I never go by without looking over and pausing," she said.
To mark the anniversary, the Rachael Runyan Award will be presented to a citizen who helped in the recovery of a missing child during a recent Amber Alert incident. The Amber Alert will also get its annual Aug. 26 test and Simmons said there will be "something about (her daughter's) case" to talk about.
Neither Simmons nor the Attorney General's Office would go into detail, but officials at the AG's office confirmed that "major developments" in the case will be announced.
Simmons said Sunday will be a bittersweet day. Bitter because of the tragedy, yet sweet knowing that since her daughter's kidnapping, so many other lives have been saved because of increased awareness and advances in technology.
Since the Amber Alert was introduced in Utah, 19 children have been safely recovered. Tuesday, the AG's office announced the start of the new Child Abduction Response Team (CART) to act as the SWAT team for missing children.
"If this knowledge was around 25 years ago I might be at home with my daughter and her family," Simmons said.
E-mail: preavy@desnews.com