Cherrie Mahan disappeared from her bus stop in Winfield Township on Feb. 22, 1985, and despite time, family and law enforcement have not forgotten the missing wide-eyed girl.

Cherrie’s mother, Janice McKinney, said the 39th anniversary of her 8-year-old daughter’s disappearance has become harder to bear. Nonetheless, she will continue standing at the bottom of her old driveway on Cornplanter Road until she knows the truth.

“I’m paying tribute to her so it brings her life and what happened to her into the public one more time. And I’ll do it every year until she comes home or I’m on the other side of the grass,” McKinney said.

Some of McKinney’s friends will join her at the bottom of the driveway at 4 p.m. Thursday, and she knows many more who can’t attend are there in spirit.

McKinney recalled Feb. 22, 1985, as a Friday with pleasant weather; the snow was starting to melt.

She had the day off, and remembered talking to Cherrie as she walked with her down the steep driveway to catch the bus that morning. Cherrie was a third-grade student at the former Winfield Elementary School in the South Butler County School District, now the Knoch School District.

“I took her down to put her on the bus, and she gave me orders of what she wanted,” she said.

McKinney elaborated that Cherrie was a talkative girl, and told her mother she planned to come home after school, eat dinner and go to a friend’s house.

The rest of the story is well known to community members and investigators.

According to Max DeLuca, the detective with state police’s criminal investigation unit who handles Cherrie’s case, the school bus arrived back on Cornplanter Road just after 4 p.m.

“Cherrie exited her school bus with three other children,” he said. “The stop was approximately 100 yards from her residence.”

After she got off the bus, Cherrie was never seen again. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, she was last seen wearing a gray coat, blue denim skirt, blue leg warmers and beige boots.

McKinney said she and her husband Leroy, Cherrie’s stepfather, both recalled hearing the school bus from their residence up the hill.

“When I heard the bus and she didn’t come up, I knew something was up,” she said.

McKinney said her family moved to Cornplanter Road from Saxonburg, where Cherrie grew up. Shortly after the move, she said her daughter kept saying someone was looking in at her from outside the window.

This resulted in her daughter requesting to move bedrooms, according to McKinney.

“When we moved, I should have known something was wrong … Was there somebody? I don’t know,” she said.

Witnesses reported seeing a blue or green van traveling behind Cherrie’s school bus as well as a blue-colored sedan in the area. The vehicle operators have not been identified or located, according to DeLuca.

A drawing of the van described by witnesses — depicting a skier and slope along the side — was constructed to aid the investigation. DeLuca said it would have been especially useful when Cherrie first went missing, as the vehicle was likely still being driven.

Cherrie’s case is considered “active, not cold,” as tips continue to come in, especially around the date of Cherrie’s disappearance.

“Unlike most of the other unsolved cases in Butler County, this case receives tips,” DeLuca said.

Hundreds of people have been interviewed in connection to the case, those with and without criminal records, according to DeLuca. The file is stored in multiple filing cabinets with just under 4,000 pages of typed or handwritten reports. The additional tips, evidence, pictures and other documents take up more space.

“Tips on the Mahan case constantly come into the barracks,” DeLuca said. “The tips have been sent through Crime Stoppers, phone calls, letters, emails, through National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Some tips people want to speak with a detective, and some are anonymous. The tips come from all over the U.S., and some will come from as far away as Europe.”

DeLuca said Cherrie’s case has passed through several investigators hands, and it remains one state police want to see solved.

“Detectives want to solve all of their unsolved cases, but cases (with) child victims can weigh more on an investigator. Especially cases where the child has not been located,” he said. “The amount of time that has elapsed since Cherrie’s disappearance makes this case difficult to solve.”

He added that as time goes on, people with knowledge of the incident may die or grow too old to cooperate with law enforcement.

Other efforts to find Cherrie included her face being the first to appear on the “Have you seen me?” ads produced by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Cherrie was legally declared dead in November 1998 by County Common Pleas Court Judge Thomas Doerr, according to a Butler Eagle article.

Doerr fixed the missing girl’s date of death as Feb. 22, 1992, as individuals must be missing for seven years to be declared dead.

The declaration allowed McKinney to donate $58,000 to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Cherrie’s name. The money was initially collected as a reward for anyone with information that would help find Cherrie.

February will always be difficult for McKinney, as the month marks Cherrie’s disappearance and the death of her husband six years ago.

Despite the difficulty of remembering, it does not stop her from standing at the bottom of the driveway every year.

“I’m going to be there no matter what. I want everyone to remember. I’m never going to forget,” she said. “I tell everybody: I will be standing in that driveway until the day I die, until I know what happened. I hope everybody and their brother comes past me.”

McKinney said she wants to know what happened to Cherrie that day, and she wants someone to tell her.

“I want them to look me in my eyes and know what I’ve been through,” she said. “I just want closure; I want to know what happened, where she is, so I can put this to rest.”

Tips about Cherrie Mahan’s case can be submitted to the Butler state police barracks by calling 724-284-8100, through the website for National Missing and Exploited Children at missingkids.org, through Pennsylvania Crime Stoppers by calling 1-800-4PA-TIPS (8477), or on the website, p3tips.com.