6-months since Pearl Pinson's abduction in Vallejo

VALLEJO, Calif. (KTVU) - A vigil was held Friday night in Vallejo to mark six months since a 15-year-old girl was abducted on her way to school. Pearl Pinson hasn't been seen or heard from since.

Authorities know who did it, but they don't know what he did with Pearl.

"Every day, we're hoping to wake up to that phone call that she's home," Pearl's sister Rose, 18, told KTVU, at the site of the kidnapping, Home Acres Avenue and Taylor Avenue.

"Everybody put your candles up," instructed Rose, to a few dozen family and friends who gather on the 25th of each month at the overpass on Interstate 780.

"I love you Pearl, we love you, stay strong, Amen," everyone chimed in.

On May 25, as Pearl walked to catch her bus to school, she was attacked and dragged across the elevated walkway and into a car.

A witness heard her screams and tried to intervene.

He found a gun pointed at him, and as he ran away, he heard shots.

Pearl's blood was found on the ramp.

"It was all over, and we cleaned it up because there are children on this overpass all the time," said Rose, showing where posters, paper flowers, and painted messages to Pearl adorn the spiral ramp now.

"This was my last place my little sister was seen at," Rose explained," and she was fighting for her life after he took her for no reason."

The abductor was Fernando Castro, 19, who lived in the same neighborhood, but was unknown to Pearl and her family.

The day after she disappeared, Castro was spotted some three hundred miles away in Solvang, and killed in a shootout with pursuing sheriff's deputies.

Castro was known to have traveled as far north as Sonoma County, as far south as Santa Barbara County, but searches have not turned up any trace of Pearl.

"Our hope is that we'll find her alive, " lead detective Sean Mattson, of the Solano County Sheriff's Department, told KTVU. "At this point, she could be anywhere."

Tips have come in, but haven't panned out.

"We've had it where they believe they've seen her, and we'll go to the location, for example a bus stop, and we'll get the video and it's obviously not her. But we want people to call in," urged Mattson.

Pearl's best friends say she likes to draw and skateboard, and that their lives are quieter without her laughter, and big personality.

"It's been half a year now and it's just not the same without her," friend Melina Caprio told KTVU.

"We're always loud, we're always crazy, and Pearl was always the one cracking the jokes, no matter what the situation.

"It's just kind of hard," admitted friend Ashley Zahner, "because I had my last two periods with her, and I used to turn around to tell her something and she wouldn't be there."

Those who love Pearl vow to keep their hopes up, and keep lighting her way back with monthly vigils.

"It feels like nobody cares anymore, but my family, her friends, our community, we're not giving up on her until she's brought home," declared Rose.

The group signed, then hung a banner, over the busy freeway.

vPearl would be a sophomore at Jesse Bethel High School this year, and her sixteenth birthday is December 15.