“When did you switch from hope to mission-oriented? Because listening to you, you are very mission-oriented on finding him and bringing him home. Was there a point when you said, ‘I accept this, and this is my next step’?”
Pam Cain: “Well, you have to define what ‘this’ is. If I had hope that he was still living… when the government came out with the ‘last known alive’ list and he was on it, even though my mother and I had spent years believing he probably was killed, you had that one little sliver of hope.
Then, even when I felt like he couldn’t possibly be alive—because you wouldn’t want him to be, considering the potential torture and what living in captivity would have done to him physically and mentally—you reach a point where you accept that he is no longer living.
But there is still that hope that you’re going to find him. And that’s the bottom line: finding them and bringing them out of there. Hope springs eternal—you just change what the hope is.”