BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — When Lauren Spierer arrived at Indiana University, the popular freshman already had a network of friends.
Spierer, a missing college student from Greenburgh, N.Y., two of her three IU roommates, her boyfriend and several other friends all went to the same group of Jewish, co-ed sleepaway camps in Wayne County in northeastern Pennsylvania.
At Camp Towanda, Spierer, a petite fashionista, had a summer romance with Jesse Wolff, a slightly older kid from Long Island who would become her college boyfriend. There, she also met Blair Wallach, who became her freshman roommate.
Meanwhile, she played intercamp soccer and lacrosse against Amanda Roude, a Chappaqua, N.Y., girl at Indian Head Camp who became a close friend, and Hadar Tamir, a Long Island girl at Camp Chenawanda who moved in with Spierer and Wallach during their sophomore year.
By the time many of them arrived as freshmen in September 2009, they'd already met or were preparing to meet via Internet social networking sites.
"We pretty much had our group of friends made out before we came here," Tamir said.
"All of our parents sent us to camp," Roude said. "Being from the East Coast, it was definitely comfortable coming here from the same group of people who grew up the way we did."
Several met at a downtown coffee shop here recently to talk about their friend, as a crowd of hundreds massed a few blocks away outside Spierer's apartment building, readying for their latest search for the sophomore who disappeared June 3.
Now more than two weeks since Spierer vanished after a night of partying, her closest friends are refusing to give up hope, at least publicly, that the 20-year-old will be found.
They have all participated in the search parties, joining hundreds daily who have scoured this midwestern college town and outlying areas, looking for any trace of her. They shared positive recollections of their friend, largely because they want the public to remain vested in a search effort that is losing momentum.
At daily news conferences at police headquarters, Spierer's parents have followed up every briefing with heartfelt, purposeful reflection on their youngest daughter, who despite a rare heart condition established herself as an outgoing young woman who studied hard, made friends easily, loved fashion and helped others.
She volunteered with Habitat for Humanity to build homes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and spent this year's spring break in Israel with her older sister, Rebecca, planting trees for the Jewish National Fund.
Spierer grew up with a strong Jewish identity. Her family belongs to Scarsdale Synagogue, Temples Tremont and Emanu-El.
And she chose Indiana University in part because of its large and engaged Jewish population. The student body of 40,000 is about 10 percent Jewish, and Spierer attended functions at the campus Hillel.
The school's Hillel chapter has taken a leading role in the search, posting updates on its website. Meanwhile, the group's leader, Rabbi Sue Silberberg, has devoted much of the past two weeks overseeing volunteers and counseling Spierer's parents.
Some former Edgemont classmates have traveled here to aid the search, saying she would have done the same for them if they were in trouble. They recall how she was the one who led an effort to raise money for a charity set up in honor of another high school friend, Taylor Matthews, who died from cancer a few years ago.
An avid collector of vintage clothing and jewelry, Spierer raised the most by selling clothing accessories she designed and organizing a fashion show in 2008.
Spierer won the "best dressed" award in her senior year and, when she arrived at IU, she decided to major in apparel merchandising. At the same time, she became known for her affinity for a certain feline fashion icon.
"She's beyond obsessed with Hello Kitty," Tamir said. "She had Hello Kitty outfits, a Hello Kitty blow dryer, water bottles, everything."
Arriving at college, the small, bubbly teen made a strong impression on the group of East Coasters who would become her best friends.
Most people called her Spierer, rather than Lauren.
She lived on campus her first year with Wallach, who shares Spierer's major. Her friends say she would spend much of her time in the college library and with her boyfriend, often spending nights with him in an off-campus house he shared with fratmates.
Even before she enrolled, she traveled here to attend his fraternity formal.
"She didn't come here because of Jesse, but it definitely took their relationship to the next level," Roude said.
Tamir described the couple as "best friends."
Spierer, a social girl by nature, had many friends and liked to hang out with them at night.
"We're all, to an extent, 'partiers,'" Tamir said, asked whether Spierer would often go out. "But I wouldn't consider her the ultimate partier. She went out, she had a good time, but it wasn't excessive."
She went out drinking the night of June 3, leaving Smallwood shortly after midnight and going to friend Jay Rosenbaum's apartment up the street.
She had plans to meet up with Wolff but was unable to contact him because she left her cellphone at a bar, Tamir said.
Instead, she later returned to Rosenbaum's apartment. His account of seeing her leave his apartment is believed to be the last reported sighting.
It was hours later, when bar employees saw that Wolff had texted her phone, that they called him to report they had it. He retrieved it, checked her apartment, then reported her missing and called her parents to share the disturbing news.
Spierer was just two weeks from finishing summer classes when she vanished, and was planning to return to Greenburgh this week for an internship at clothing store Anthropologie.