May 7, 2007 11:02 pm US/Central
Search For Missing Plainfield Woman Goes National
Woman's Co-Workers At Lincoln Elementary Speak To Police About Case
CBS 2 West Suburban Bureau Chief Mike Puccinelli and Alita Guillen contributed to this report.
PLAINFIELD, Ill. (CBS) ―
For seven days family and friends have turned up no signs of Lisa Stebic and Monday night her cousin and the Plainfield police chief took their search to a national level.
Appearing on Fox News Channel they expressed their concern for the missing mother of two. A $20,000 reward was also announced and the chief expressed his displeasure in Stebic's husband's unwillingness to take a polygraph test.
Apparently Craig Stebic agreed to take that polygraph test on Tuesday, but the chief told Fox News Channel that Monday night he received a call indicating Craig Stebic would not take the polygraph.
Lisa Stebic and her husband lived in the same house, but he says they hadn't spoken in months. The couple has two elementary-school-aged children, and they were in the process of getting divorced.
Lisa was last seen by her husband a week ago Monday evening. He says she left their Plainfield home around 6 o'clock. The next day police got a call from her friends that she had not shown up for work.
Since then family and friends have been looking for the 37-year-old woman.
Lisa Stebic worked at a local elementary school and as CBS 2 West Suburban Bureau Chief Mike Puccinelli reports, her co-workers were speaking out Monday.
A police officer went to Lincoln Elementary school in Plainfield to talk with her colleagues at the school's lunch program.
Betty Stubner wanted to say a few words about a boss she'd come to love.
"She was a good person… she used to call me her second mother," Stubner said.
It is with heavy hearts that they now clean up the kitchen that Stebic used to run.
"It's depressing. It's hard. It's very hard," Stubner said. "You come here and you're waiting for her to come in with her big water container and her smile."
Sunday more than 100 volunteers fanned out to search and pass out flyers near Stebic's home, again with no success.
Police spent the day interviewing relatives, friends and acquaintances and reviewing information gathered from Stebic's computer.
Deputy Chief Mark Eiting of the Plainfield Police Department said Craig Stebic is not a suspect or a person of interest at this point.
Tuesday the Plainfield police are expected to announce that $20,000 reward locally in the hopes that someone with information will come forward.
(CBS 2, the Naperville Sun and the Aurora Beacon-News are news partners covering stories in the western suburbs of Chicago.)
