The secret life of a soccer mom

It was bizarre. And for Paige Birgfeld's family and friends, terrifying. This was three days after she disappeared. Her car. On fire, right in town, just a few miles from her house.

Paige wasn't in it, wasn't anywhere around. But, said Sheriff Hilkey…

Stanley Hilkey: There was probably a lot of clues in that car. And, some of that clue and, some of that evidence is still yet to be completely analyzed. But—

Keith Morrison, Dateline NBC: Didn't all get burned up?

Stanley Hilkey: No, it's badly damaged. You know, what was doesn't damaged in the fire was probably damaged in the suppression of the fire, too. We haven't gotten all of that evidence back yet, probably. It certainly appears to be an arson and probably done in a way to try to destroy evidence.

But nothing in the car explained where she was.

And now, any chance that Paige had had some bizarre accident, or was lost somewhere, was gone.

This was foul play.

The sheriff brought in search dogs in hopes of tracking her scent, and now, suddenly, it seemed as if half the city had joined was looking Paige.

Her parents were amazed to see not just friends, and neighbors, but volunteers from all over the state flock to Grand Junction to look for their missing daughter.

Frank Birgfeld: So here is the command center ... This is a park. It is fairly close to Paige's house and we have a group that is coming in. It looks like one of the smaller groups.

This is difficult, dispiriting work. It is dry and hot in the way the high country sun can scorch in the summertime.

Paige's Parents: This is big country up here. You'd go out for usually two hours. You'd come back to the command center and get some liquids.  And it wasn't 20, 30 minutes, and somebody would hold up a map and say, "We're headed out again." And there were no slackers.  Everyone went. And they would go again and again and again.

Paige's children, occupied with god knows what terrors, had their grandparents at least -- for now.

Paige's 8-year-old daughter even joined the search, decorating search poles for rescuers to use.

Even though, by then, searchers were not at all confident that they were looking for a person who was still alive.

Paiges's Parents: I felt Paige would be home within a day or two.  That for whatever held her up, had to have been something wrong or she would have never been away from her children overnight.  But I don't think we ever thought it was something more serious than that.

Paige’s friends hoped, of course, that she'd turn up, safe and sound.  But…

Friends: Suddenly this small quiet town has a tragedy. And you know, it's a mom with three kids that's missing. And so, they want to come help cause they want to get this mom back with her kids or at least give the family closure.

And then a few days into the search, something big...

Alongside a wind-blown highway outside of town, volunteers spotted bits of paper in among the gravel and the weeds.

And when they retrieved them? They found Paige’s check registers, her Blockbuster membership card, and personal items. The sorts of thing a woman puts in her purse.

Had Paige thrown them out of the car? Or was it someone else? Someone trying to get rid of evidence?

Andrea Land: On one hand you're excited because it’s something, and it’s hers and you know that it’s hers and maybe that’s going to lead somewhere but by the same token it’s scary because you think why are her things on the side of the road, you know, how did this happen? 

Trouble is, the sheriff's department couldn't make much sense of it, either.

Stanley Hilkey: It opens up the door for a lot of speculation. Could that have been placed by Paige as a trail? Could it be placed there by a suspect as a diversion? Could it have blown out a vehicle going down the road, unwittingly? 

A last, apparently romantic meeting with an ex-husband...

A burned out car -- hers -- that yielded no useful clues.

Papers scattered by a highway miles out of town. Who left them there?

A search that by now covered hundreds of square miles of high desert around Grand Junction.

And no sign of Paige Birgfeld.

But were police looking in the right places? Paige’s first husband Ron Beigler told a believable story about that last night with Paige.

But what about ex-husband number two, the father of her three children?  Everybody who knew Paige also knew that marriage was deeply troubled.

And by the way, now that she was single again, did Paige’s small homebound business really generate enough income to support her expensive life?

Where was she getting the money?

Investigators were about to uncover the secret life of a soccer mom.

No one saw it coming.

Not the police, not her parents, not the city.

Now, to worry and grief, add shock.

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