"Each year she thinks about what her daughter could have been doing with her," Li said through and interpreter.

Jiezhao Li disappeared on Feb. 11, 1988. It was a Thursday. At about 4:45 p.m. she was last seen near the 7-Eleven store on Nuuanu Avenue.

Jie was selling benefit chili tickets for her school. Her vanishing triggered a huge missing person search. Posters plastered store windows. Over 2,000 people searched for her island wide.

No one was ever arrested. The case is still classified as a missing person case.

"We're hoping that someone who has lived with something for twenty years will see this or hear about it and come forward," she said through Wilson Loo, a family friend.

Li refuses to think Jiezhao is dead. No body has been found. On the anniversary of her daughter's disappearance, Li pulls out Jiezhao's pictures and relives her loss.

"If she was a runaway the feeling is strong that she would have made some contact by now," Loo said.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children created a poster of what she looked like when she went missing and how she may look today.

"She'll always have hope and so long as there's a chance that she could be found and reunited with her, she'll have that hope as long as she lives," Loo said.

Jiezhao was twelve when she went missing. The family has kept their same phone number just in case Jiezhao needs to find them.

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