Cherrie Mahan

Friends and family gather around Janice McKinney, the mother of Cherrie Mahan, at the base of her former driveway where the 8-year-old girl was reportedly abducted in 1985. Cherrie was last seen getting off of her school bus 37 years ago. McKinney gathered a group to pray Tuesday on the anniversary of her disappearance. McKinney said she is praying for answers and for someone to come forward who may know what happened, part of an effort to find closure for McKinney. Seb Foltz/Butler Eagle

WINFIELD TWP — The weather Monday was a lot like the day Janice McKinney last saw her daughter, Cherrie Mahan.

McKinney recalled the warm, sunny day 37 years ago on Feb. 22, which led to her decision not to drive to the road from her long driveway to pick up the 8-year-old Cherrie from the bus stop after school.

On Tuesday, McKinney stood at the bottom of the driveway at 1136 Cornplanter Road, a place she seldom revisits now that she lives in Saxonburg, and prayed with a group of close friends as she watched a school bus drive by the house around 4 p.m.

“She was going to go somewhere; it was a Friday so she would have came running up over the hill, but she didn’t,” McKinney said. “I was always here to pick her up when she got off that bus. But it was a nice day. We were home. I just felt that she would be OK.”

Cherrie Mahan went missing Feb. 22, 1985, at the age of 8.

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