Before they said goodbye on the afternoon of Jan. 30, Ms. Guthrie checked with one of the players, Anne Burnson, making sure that they were still on to watch church at a friend’s house on Sunday. Their ritual was to gather in the friend’s den and watch a recording of the Manhattan service that Ms. Guthrie’s youngest child, the NBC host Savannah Guthrie, had attended earlier that morning. They even had wafers and grape juice on hand for communion.
But Nancy Guthrie, always punctual, did not arrive at 11 a.m. on Feb. 1. Her friends texted, then called. They contacted Ms. Guthrie’s older daughter, Annie, who rushed to Ms. Guthrie’s home. It was empty.
Now, nearly two weeks after Ms. Guthrie’s disappearance, which the authorities have said they are investigating as an abduction, her friends and family say they are refusing to give up hope of finding her alive.
With the search for Ms. Guthrie in its 13th day, her closest friends — some speaking publicly for the first time — are trying to avoid fixating on the ominous details. They know about the blood found on her doorstep, the masked figure with a pistol caught on her doorbell camera, the discarded black gloves found by investigators scouring the desert.
“I keep thinking about every time I’d go in the kitchen door, and she’d be sitting there at the counter, just how her eyes would always light up as soon as she saw me,” said Ms. Burnson, who has been friends with Ms. Guthrie for 42 years. “That’s when you know you have a real friend.”
Shortly before her disappearance, Ms. Guthrie, the mother of the NBC host Savannah Guthrie, was celebrating her 84th birthday and playing games.
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