TREASURE VALLEY — Family members, local law enforcement agencies and even America’s Most Wanted have been on the lookout for a Meridian woman who went missing in August.

Now, the search for Rachael Hitesman Walsh — a 48-year-old mother and U.S. Postal Service employee who never missed a day of work in 27 years — is going to her fellow mail workers.

A search team headed by the American Postal Workers Union, which Walsh had been a member of for 24 years, is joining forces today with the Elmore County Search and Rescue Team for a renewed and massive search effort.

Elmore County Sheriff Rick Layher said he expects as many as 125 people to show up this morning to help search for Walsh.

Karen Fitch, Walsh’s sister, said she expects that number to be even higher with friends, family and other members of the public pitching in.

“I’m so grateful for everyone’s support, and that the post office has gotten involved,” Fitch told the Idaho Press-Tribune.

Fitch said postal staff first contacted her about a month ago and said they were trying to put something together. Local carriers voted to organize a search effort for Walsh several weeks ago, but had to wait until this weekend to get approval from investigators, she said.

Family remains hopeful

Walsh mysteriously disappeared without a trace in mid-August from her campsite in Falls Creek, about 20 miles from Mountain Home. Her family went looking for her when she didn’t return home, but Walsh and her car — a 2005 red Dodge Neon with license plates 1AUK314 — were gone.

“We’re still hopeful, very hopeful,” Walsh’s sister, Karen Fitch, said this week.

Since Walsh’s disappearance, the Elmore County Sheriff’s Office has done extensive searches by land, water and air but have yet to recover any evidence of her whereabouts.

Her family has frequently organized small search groups in remote areas of the county since she went missing.

On the night she disappeared from a campsite she frequented, authorities said a neighboring camper heard a car door shut and a vehicle leave the area around midnight.

Family members suspected one possibility might be that Walsh headed north, to her birthplace in Canada.

Hard times for relatives

Karen Fitch said the entire family will join in the search today, the latest effort in the emotionally turbulent months since her disappearance.

“It’s been really hard for the family emotionally, up and down” Fitch said.

Since her disappearance, the family has been struck with a number of added burdens, she said.

Less than two weeks after Walsh went missing, a fire badly damaged her house. Authorities determined it was accidental, Fitch said. Walsh’s four children and 5-month-old grandchild who lived in the house escaped unharmed, but “they have been displaced since then ... not only is mom gone but the home is gone now, too,” Fitch said.

Walsh’s children and grandchild are staying with family members and in a temporary apartment provided by insurance until the house is repaired.