Sorry this is long:
First point: I ran through a dozen different scenarios about where this JD came from and what brought her to AZ. Everything from abusive family in California to living on the streets for years in Canada, to having ran away from a fundamentalist Christian compound two weeks prior to her death. Then I went back through and had her wearing gray leggings, a black mini skirt, a beige top and sandals on January 26, 1999. In all of the possible scenarios she could have been wearing the same thing. Short of wearing something extremely unusual, I can see where what she was wearing wouldn't make much of a difference in identifying her.
Second point: Her general health might make a difference in determining the lifestyle she led in the years prior but prolonged sexual abuse from a step-father or mom's boyfriends, versus working as a prostitute may look very similar from a ME's point of view. I would assume that our JD showed evidence of repeated sexual trauma and possibly STDs. So, this would suggest that she was being abused in some way and didn't come from "safe" place. I keep leaning towards the idea of her being abused by someone she knew versus being on the street working. I guess because I've known kids that lived on the street and after 9 1/2 years I would think someone would come forward to at least give her "street name". Unless she wasn't on the streets for very long, but that brings us back to being abused "at home".
So, even if her health was poor, it may not tell us where to look for her past.
Point three: Either her "guardians" are aware of her death and not coming forward or they are not aware. If they are not aware, they either are looking for her or not looking.
With all of these possibilities about her "home" life aside, it still strikes me as odd that no one from her community would see her. No friends, no extended family, no neighbors, no classmates, no doctors, no dentist, no one. Was she locked in a basement for 16 years? Did she live in an isolated cabin with no contact with anyone? Did she change physically so much that no one is recognizing her? Or is it so unthinkable, that no one is even considering that this child is someone they know?
Finally, I have read about families who were searching for years for their loved one and after 20 years they found that their loved one had been deceased since the day they were missing and that they had been known to LE as an unidentified since the week they went missing. In the cases I've read, some key piece of information was omitted or incorrect and the UID was someplace the family didn't think to look. What can we do with this information to help ID this child?