Valentine's Day Mystery: Asha Degree, North Carolina Girl Who Disappeared Feb. 14 17 Years Ago, Still Missing

It was 17 years ago on Feb. 14 when a Cleveland County girl, 9-year-old Asha Jaquilla Degree, was found missing from her family's home in North Carolina. Investigators who are still pursuing the case released an age-progressed image investigators released two years ago, showing Asha, who would be 26 years old now.

Asha's family and friends held a prayer walk for her Feb. 11.

After Asha's disappearance, very few clues were discovered as the years passed, despite Asha's community and FBI offering a $45,000 reward. The Cleveland County Sheriff's Office has kept the investigation open and one full-time detective and one part-time detective have been assigned to look into it.

"About a year ago we decided to start over," Capt. Joel Shores, who leads the sheriff's investigative division, said Monday. "We went back and started the case as if it just happened. A lot of people had to be re-interviewed and evidence gone through with technology that was not around 17 years ago. Just beginning afresh with a whole new set of eyes."

"I honestly still think she's alive," Asha's mother, Iquilla Degree, said during the prayer walk Saturday. "As her mother, I've just got enough faith in God that if he already had her soul, that he would've let us know."

Last year, Iquilla said: "She's the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the morning and the last thing on my mind when I go to sleep at night. I will never give up on her."

Authorities believe Asha left her home at night on Feb. 14, 2000, when everyone else in the family were asleep. Two truck drivers had later reported seeing a girl matching Asha's description a few hours later, around 3:30 a.m., walking alone along Highway 18 which was not more than a mile and a half from their home.

Investigations and searches were launched in the days and weeks following her disappearance. At that time, according to the FBI, searchers found some school equipment believed to have belonged to Asha, including a pencil, marker and a hair bow, in a tool shed near where the truckers had spotted the young girl.

Another 18 months later, Asha's backpack, with her name and telephone number written inside, was found buried in a plastic trash bag along Highway 18 where she was spotted earlier.

According to FBI officials in May 2016, a new witness reported seeing a girl who resembled Asha's description, getting into a dark green, 1970s Lincoln Mark IV or Ford Thunderbird with rust around the wheel well, the same morning she had disappeared.