road very recently. and after? dumped and torched the car in an industrial area just a quarter mile from where paige made her last phone call. it was way beyond her house, right? correct. didn t fit for the car to be there. reporter: news of the car fire was a turning point. no longer did the public suspect this was a case of an overwhelmed, runaway mom. the response was an outpouring of volunteers, a spontaneous community project to find paige. just seeing the dad on tv and everything like that, i have some children of my own and i know what i d be feeling like if one of my children was gone and i just wanted to try to help if i could. reporter: paige s dad was there every day greeting a small army of volunteers. thanks for helping us. you know it s just really tough you know for people to give of themselves to that degree. i just [ sighs ] one of our moms was gone. and her kids needed her, and we needed our friend.
coming up police pieced together the hours leading up to paige s disappearance. i m at the corner of 23 and logos and there s a car on fire in the parking lotte building right here. one encounter grabs their attention. we found out she was visiting her ex-husband. when dateline continues. n s you. keep doing you. we ll take care of medicare part d. by helping you save up to five dollars on each prescription, and with free one-on-one pharmacy support, we ve filled over 2 billion prescriptions and counting.
i think that it s more likely that it s a premeditated abduction. reporter: but sometimes those not asking questions find answers. it was the third day. sunday, july 1st, 2007. 9:58 p.m. a woman driving home from work, slammed on her brakes, called 911. 911, this is dusty, where s your emergency? hi. i m at the corner of 23 and logos. and there is a car on fire in the parking lot at the building right here. there is a car on fire? yeah. do you see flames or smoke? yeah. there s there s a lot of flames. comes up paige s car. what will it reveal? more intense on the driver s side. then something else belonging to paige. it was an awful feeling of dread thinking how did this get here? what does it mean? either paige s abductor tried to throw them off track or either in the trunk of a car
investigators crawled over his daughter s car. and that morning, frank gave the first of what would be many, many interviews. we were hopeful when we found the car things would fall into place and maybe they will. reporter: this interview, though, was one frank just couldn t get through. you know it occurred to me that i haven t cried in a long time. i ve learned how to do that. that s it. reporter: firefighter robert thomason helped with the arson investigation. you can see that the glass itself was all burned out and you can see where it s still kind of intact over here. it was really obvious to see that more intense was on the driver s side. reporter: meaning that s where the fire started. that s where the arsonist wanted to be sure to erase evidence. under the car, damaged skid plates and strands of wild grass caught in the suspension, meaning somebody had driven off