IMO Its seem that there is a high possibility that she might have in fact ran away despite what her mom has been saying. I still the don't understand the reservoir searches what are they expecting to find?
No matter how one interprets Sierra's social media, the fact is that she has no history of running away.
It's very rare for a kid to start out by staying away for 6 weeks. Typically, kids start out by staying away for a short period of time before coming back (voluntarily or involuntarily). As they get more practice in how to survive and how to evade detection, they stay away for longer periods of time.
Next, no matter what her relationship with her mother may have been like, it sounds like her relationship with her father and sister was very close, very tight. If Sierra had run away, I would expect her father or her sister's places to be her top two destinations.
Third, she had no car and no access to one. If she was a farm kid who had experience driving farm machinery, then I'd say there was a chance she stole a car. But that wasn't Sierra; she's a rather sheltered, naive girl who doesn't know how to drive in my opinion.
If she ran away, she'd either hitchhike or she would have been seen at a bus depot (video surveillance) or train station (video surveillance). In this day and age, hitchhikers are unusual; no one has reported seeing her hitching.
I think LE gives lip service to the possibility that Sierra ran away because it is within the realm of possibility. It's also within the realm of possibility that California will be destroyed by an asteroid hit tomorrow but I don't see anyone including that possibility in their plans for tomorrow.
It's clear what LE is looking for in the reservoir searches: Sierra's body. No one expects to pull a live victim from the water under those circumstances.
