August 18th, 1993 is a day that many people remember vividly. It was the last time anyone saw 12-year-old Sara Anne Wood. She was on her way home, riding her bicycle along Hacadam Road in Sauquoit, when she was taken.

"Sara was a cheerful, loud, dramatic person. She had a fasination with Dolly Parton and she was giving," recalls Dusty Wood, Sara's brother. 

Soon after Sara's disappearance, her family created the Sara Anne Wood Rescue Center, where millions of missing posters were printed in an effort to bring her home. They also organized a 500-mile bicycle ride to Washington D.C., arriving on National Missing Children's Day. They were greeted by the entire sixth grade class of Thomas Jefferson Elementary School of North Utica. 

"They were singing, I'll never forget the words: 'Sara's team, Sara's team, this is your day. Sara's team, Sara's team, you made it all the way' and they sang it over and over again," said Dick Jordan, a member of 'Sara's team.'

Much of what happened to Sara still remains a mystery, but the work they did was not for nothing.

"Everything we've done up to this point and are doing now and will do in the future is for Sara Anne Wood's legacy," said Jordan. 

The Sara Anne Wood Rescue Center soon became an official branch of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. 

"We have sent out over 10 and a half million posters of missing children all throughout the United States. And represented about 11-thousand missing children and out of that 11-thousand we've helped to recover over 75-hundred," said Wendy Fical, program director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Mohawk Valley chapter. 

And now that first ride to Washington D.C. has turned into something so much greater. It raised awareness and funds for the Mohawk Valley Center.

"Through the years its grown and now it's almost 500 participants each year. And there's also other rides. There's rides in Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Albany and also Flower Mound, Texas," said Jordan. 

"I don't think anybody would have thought that 25-years later, we would have started something that would have affected so many other children from the loss of Sara. That our whole community got together and changed the way, I think, we think about how to protect the children in our neighborhoods," said Wood. 

Volunteers and donations are always needed to continue the important work Sara's family started.