A dogged determination to find missing teacher Tara Grinstead was evident Saturday night among the soft candlelight and heartfelt words spoken at a memorial service for the former beauty queen.

The old Irwin County High School football stadium in Ocilla was the site of the service marking the second anniversary of Grinstead’s disappearance. A small group of family and friends attended.

Grinstead vanished from her home on Oct. 22, 2005 after attending the Georgia Sweet Potato Pageant in Fitzgerald, where she had assisted some of the contestants with their hair and makeup. When she didn’t show up for work on Monday, co-workers at Irwin County High School called the Ocilla Police Department.

At the stadium Saturday, luminaries on the field and a display of photographs of Grinstead with friends and family members lined one of the bleachers in the stadium. Helium-filled balloons were released during the ceremony. Friends distributed “Justice for Tara” T-shirts with the 229-468-0667 tip line number on the front and a Bible verse, Matthew 10:26 (“Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.”) printed on the back. Buttons with photographs of Grinstead with Santa Claus and the www.findtara.com Web site were available at the ceremony.

The case has garnered national media attention. Hundreds of people joined in the search after Grinstead’s disappearance and scoured the county looking for her. Family members, friends and other volunteers who have searched for clues to her disappearance want to keep Grinstead’s case in the spotlight.

“If we don’t, I’m scared she’ll be raked under the rug and forgotten,” said Nelda Walker, director of the Tara Command Center at 121 N. Cherry St. in downtown Ocilla.

Walker, who taught school with Grinstead, said tips continue to come into the center.

“People will come by and pick up flyers and take them with them on out-of-town trips,” Walker said.

Walker said that solving the case of Grinstead’s disappearance remains a top priority with local and state law enforcement agencies and that the “Find Tara” group of volunteers are determined as ever.

“We aren’t going to stop searching until we get her home,” Walker said. “We have to give the family closure.”

Grinstead’s mother, Faye Grinstead, said it is a daily struggle to keep going since her daughter disappeared. The only thing that keeps her going, she said, is the hope that her daughter is alive.

“It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through in my entire life,” Grinstead said. “It’s indescribable.

“It’s just her being gone for whatever reason. I can’t see her or be with her. She’s just gone from me.”

Grinstead said she has a strong support system in friends and family.

Grinstead’s sister, Anita Gattis, spoke at the memorial. Gattis spoke of how her sister has missed two of her birthdays, two Christmases, two Easters and two Mother’s Days with her family. Gattis added that her sister had missed the deaths of two of her uncles, Faye Grinstead’s brothers, who have died since she disappeared. She said that she and others are determined to find the answers to her sister’s disappearance.

“They may not be the answers we want, but we will find the answers,” Gattis said.

Gattis said that it still sometimes seems as if she has just seen her sister and talked with her, even though Tara has been missing for two years.

The night Grinstead went missing, local police found her car in the driveway and unlocked. In her bedroom, a bedside lamp was turned over and broken. When asked if she believed Grinstead knew her abductor, Walker said she knew Grinstead well enough to know that she would not have let a stranger inside her home.

“If she didn’t know them, she would not have opened the door,” Walker said. “The struggle wasn’t at the door; it was in the back of the house.”