By Megan Matteucci
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
BLAIRSVILLE — Kristi Cornwell spent years securing violent felons in prison and never got hurt.
She took firearms classes, taught self-defense and whizzed down the Dragon’s Tail — one of the most dangerous roads for bikers in the country — on her motorcycle. Yet she never had any problems.
But last week, the 38-year-old mother known for taking risks became a victim at what her family calls one of the safest places in the world — near her Blairsville home.
“She could fight off almost anyone. She had firearms training, self-defense training,” her brother Richard Cornwell said Sunday. “I think she’s better prepared for this situation than anyone else. That’s what keeps us positive.”
For the fifth day in a row, more than 100 officers scoured the small Union County city on Sunday on foot, horseback and ATV searching for Cornwell.
Police say Cornwell, a former probation officer, was abducted Tuesday while on an evening walk along a little-traveled road near her parents’ Blairsville home. At the time, she was on her cellphone, telling her boyfriend in Atlanta that a car was following her.
The next thing the boyfriend heard was a struggle and then Cornwell was gone. He called police, and that’s what began the second massive police search in the North Georgia town in less than a year.
Last year, some of the same officers spent days searching the same woods for Meredith Emerson, a hiker who later was found raped and killed in nearby Dawson County.
Such a horrible crime can’t happen here twice, residents say.
“It’s very unusual for this to happen, much less in the same county where you don’t see this type of thing,” Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokesman John Bankhead said.
That’s what keeps the Cornwell family going. They know their missing loved one is strong, and they are convinced she is alive.
The GBI said it remains committed to finding her. Officers, divers and K-9s plan to return to the search today, Bankhead said.
“The most difficult thing is we still don’t know whether it was random or a targeted abduction,” Bankhead said.
Family members say Cornwell worked with some of the worst of society --- in prisons and with ex-convicts on probation. But they don’t think anyone would want to hurt her. GBI agents have looked at all of those cases anyway and found no possible suspects.
Other than finding Cornwell’s cellphone about two miles from the site of the abduction, investigators have few leads.
On Sunday, more than 100 officers from 17 agencies rotated shifts and walked up and down rural roads throughout the city. They looked under bushes, scanned woods and climbed into ditches.
Bankhead said Cornwell could be anywhere.
By midafternoon Sunday, officers had stopped searching the field where her cellphone was found and moved back to Jones Creek Road, the area where she was last seen walking.
Kristi Cornwell has spent most of her life in Blairsville. After graduating from North Georgia College with a degree in criminal justice, she worked at the state prison in Blairsville, the Towns County Sheriff’s Office and the state probation office.
But after years of counseling prisoners, she wanted to focus her help elsewhere, her brother said.
She enrolled in the medical technician program at Dalton State College and worked an internship at Union General Hospital.
Her brother said she fell in love several times, resulting in three divorces and a 15-year-old son. She shares custody with her ex-husband.
Investigators questioned her most recent boyfriend Douglas Davis and the ex-husbands --- and have ruled them out as suspects, the brother said.
Copyright 2009 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution