Amy Elk talks to 11Alive about after learning that a body found in the woods in Lawrenceville, might be her missing sister, Nique Leili.
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- To get to the heart of a news story, sometimes you have to swim upstream through a river of raw emotion.
Sometimes, you get caught in an unexpected whirlpool of overwhelming grief.
At 6:30 Saturday morning, producer David Ries asked what I thought about reporting on a search for a missing Gwinnett County woman. Family members hadn't seen Nique Leili, a mother of three, in over a week. Her heartbroken loved ones had organized a search that would begin at 9 a.m., right as our morning broadcast was going on the air. They invited us to be there in a desperate effort to bring attention to their plight, hoping it might reveal some answers.
Watch the story: Body found during search for missing mother
Despite their sadness and confusion, the family welcomed us with kindness. Nique's sister Amy Elk summoned enough courage to provide us with a live interview. Afterward, several relatives stood in a drizzle of rain to talk to us about the circumstances surrounding Nique's disappearance and their frantic desire to bring her home. That included Nique's 19-year-old daughter who tearfully referred to her mom as her best friend.
With their blessing, we followed Nique Leili's family and friends as they traveled into the missing woman's neighborhood to distribute flyers and hunt for clues.
In my experience, searches like these rarely produce any tangible evidence of a loved one's whereabouts. The effort is more about spreading the word, broadcasting a picture, urging the unaware to get involved. Our role was to satisfy the family's request to spread their plea beyond the confines of one neighborhood.
Foolishly, I was lulled into believing this Saturday morning would follow the typical script. We were all about to be blindsided.
Photographer Stephen Boissy and I were with Nique Leili's mother when we heard sirens. Two Gwinnett County police officers peeled off toward the commotion. Then mom got a phone call.
"They found a body," she screamed out to me.
We responded to the scene, less than a mile away. That's where photographer Stephen and I were suddenly swimming in a tsunami of sadness.
As rare as it is for a family search to produce answers, it is even more rare when our camera is right there to witness such a moving development. Instinctively, Stephen stayed in his role of photographer. Nique Leili's family had grown so accustomed to our presence by then, they even reached out to us with expressions of confusion and mourning.
Never once did they wave us away. Instead, after just a few heartbreaking minutes, Stephen and I realized it was time to point the camera elsewhere. Much of what we observed would never make it to a television set.
We remained for the next couple of hours, waiting to see if police could answer any of the lingering questions of how and why. Nique Leili's family slipped from pain to shock. I made one fumbling attempt after another to offer them comfort and support.
"We came here to help you," I told Nique Leili's mother. "Now I just feel like I'm in the way."
She touched my shoulder. "We just appreciate that you paid attention to us," she offered.
You may be wondering why we aired any of this family's grieving. It is a legitimate question. The situation thrust me into a journalistic conundrum, the challenge of telling this family's powerful story without making it appear that we were exploiting them.
I'm not going to pretend that I did a perfect job of handling it. Perhaps we should have scaled back on the more painful moments. Perhaps I should have done a better job of explaining the relationship between this reporter and the family that never objected to me being a part of what should have been an intimate, private time.
The emotion was powerful, and it revealed exactly why this family so desperately wanted us to listen. It's something to consider the next time you see a poster with the face of a missing person. There are loved ones behind that poster. They are real people with real hearts that break. They are people so desperate for your help that they'll crack themselves wide open to get it.
As I was leaving the scene Saturday, Nique Leili's sister made one request of me.
"Don't try to interview Alex," she told me. "She'll fall apart."
Alex was Nique Leili's 19-year-old daughter who'd talked to me earlier that morning. I promised that I wouldn't put Alex on camera again, but I had to talk to her. Alex is the same age as my daughter. They're both in college in Athens. Both want to be nurses. My heart sagged for the entire family, but for obvious reasons, I felt a special connection with Alex.
On my way out, I put my hand on her shoulder. I complemented her courage. I offered her my prayers.
We parted ways, with Alex and her entire family riding shotgun in my heart.