Ilene Misheloff’s bedroom in her parents’ two-story home on a quiet cul-de-sac in Dublin is much the way she left it on Jan. 30, 1989, the day she vanished while walking home from school.

Her books, ice-skating medals, ice-skating magazines, desk and twin bed are there. So is the bag she would have picked up after school to take to skating practice — stuffed with two pairs of custom-made ice skates, rags to clean the boot blades, and a water bottle.

“Nobody goes in Ilene’s room except for law enforcement, so when she comes home, we’re going to find somewhere for her to sleep until we can get a HazMat team in there, and get rid of about 10 feet of dust,” said Ilene’s mother, Maddi Misheloff. “That’s her private world, and it’s going to stay that way until she’s here.”

The last time Maddi and Mike Misheloff entered the room was not long after their 13-year-old daughter went missing 30 years ago, they said.

The case remains one of the Bay Area’s most haunting mysteries. Despite receiving thousands of tips over the past three decades and searching for links between Ilene’s disappearance and the abductions of Bay Area girls during the late ’80s and early ’90s, detectives with the Dublin Police Department and the FBI have not identified a suspect or found any trace of Ilene.

“You gotta think that there is somebody out there that knows something — either the person responsible for Ilene’s disappearance or someone who was told something about it,” said Dublin police Capt. Nate Schmidt. “There are cases out there that after long periods of time, (kidnapped) girls were presumably no longer with us, yet they were still alive. That is the best-case scenario. But we have to look at all options.”

For Ilene’s mom, there is only one option.

Every night, she wraps her manicured fingers around a framed photograph of her daughter on her nightstand — Ilene, with her braces, a relaxed smile, her black, curly hair pulled behind her shoulders and curly bangs bunched upon her forehead — and kisses the photo before falling asleep.

“I say good night to her and tell her, ‘OK, you’re coming home now. You have to. I love you,’” she said. “We have no evidence that she isn’t alive. That’s the only way that I can get through the day. How do you give up on your child? It’s not an option. I couldn’t live with myself if I gave up on her.”

Jan. 30, 1989, started as any other Monday for the studious middle schooler, who racked up ice-skating accolades but had dreams of studying to become a pediatrician.

Ilene dressed in a charcoal gray pullover Esprit brand sweater, pink and gray horizontally striped skirt and slipped on black low-top Keds. She likely ate breakfast on her own that morning, her mother said, and stuffed her backpack with textbooks, school materials and her flute for marching band before her father dropped her off at Wells Intermediate School — now called Wells Middle School — roughly 2 miles away on Penn Drive.

It was a sunny day, Maddi Misheloff said, and her daughter wanted to walk back home under the warm sunshine after getting dismissed early as part of a physical education contract where she satisfied the school’s P.E. requirements through ice skating.

“I wanted her to take the bus,” she said, pressing her peach-colored lips together, unconsciously running her fingers through the black coat of their Australian shepherd, Gina, who on a recent afternoon was sprawled on Misheloff’s feet.

Ilene left school at 2:30 p.m. that day and likely walked down Penn Drive — where trees with branches that appear to sprout clenched, bulbous fists now line the school grounds — and turned onto Amador Valley Boulevard. She was last seen walking alone near Village Parkway with her dark blue backpack strapped over her shoulders.

While her exact route home that day isn’t known, her parents said they later learned local teenagers would often follow Martin Canyon Creek back home because the shortcut slashed about two blocks of distance off the trek. The creek — lined with towering oak and bay trees — cuts through a portion of the city, past Mape Memorial Park, and allowed the Misheloff children to exit through the nearby Nielsen Elementary School to get home.

“That’s definitely a possibility that she made it down to the creek area, but we’ve searched that area numerous, numerous times,” Capt. Schmidt said.

At some point, Ilene’s key chain was dropped less than a half-mile from her home near the entrance to Mape Memorial Park, according to the FBI.

Ilene never called her mother that afternoon as she usually did to let her know she got home from school, but maybe she just walked straight to the ice rink, Maddi Misheloff thought to herself while still at work that day. After all, her husband sometimes dropped off Ilene’s ice-skating gear at the rink.

Panic choked Maddi Misheloff when she arrived around 4:30 or 5 p.m. at the Dublin Iceland rink where Ilene practiced and realized she was missing from the pack of skaters lacing up their skates and coasting across the ice. Ilene’s coaches explained they had driven to the family home around 3:30 p.m. to pick her up, but Ilene wasn’t there.

Ilene would spend roughly 30 hours a week practicing at the ice rink. It wasn’t her “modus operandi” to miss a skating lesson, her mother said.

“Not by choice,” she said.

Maddi Misheloff called home to make sure Ilene hadn’t accidentally fallen asleep and missed practice. She called her husband at his office to see if he dropped off her skates at the rink. He hadn’t. No one knew where Ilene was.

“My next call was 911,” she said.

That night, Mike Misheloff spent roughly six hours tracking the creek for clues, gripping a flashlight and shouting his daughter’s name into the darkness. Every now and again, he ran into Dublin police officers also scouring the creek and vegetation.

At 2 a.m., nearly 12 hours after Ilene was last seen walking home, Mike decided to head home and try to sleep amid the fear and uncertainty consuming his thoughts.

“I thought, ‘If I’m running into police, I’ll just let them be out here because they have a better idea of what to look for than I did,’” he said. “I would have probably screwed up evidence if I found something.”

Ilene’s mom didn’t sleep that first night. She laid in bed until 3 a.m., picked up the landline and dialed her father living on the East Coast and told him that his granddaughter was missing.

“Ilene was not street smart. She wouldn’t question authority,” Maddi Misheloff said. “If somebody jumped out of a vehicle or a van, pointed a gun at her and said, ‘Either you or your parents are dead unless you get in this vehicle,’ she would have gone. She would not have questioned that.”

A bloodhound sniffed one of Ilene’s shirts to search for a potential scent within the first few days of her disappearance, but found nothing.

In the first four weeks after Ilene’s disappearance, Maddi Misheloff said she “couldn’t function.” She refused to step out of the home, her eyes trained endlessly on the landline phone. Waiting.

“If she calls, I have to be here,” she said, remembering that period of time. “It was hard.”

Mike Misheloff organized an office staffed by local volunteers who printed and mailed posters with Ilene’s shy smile across the state and country.

The couple’s sudden focus on finding Ilene took a toll on their sons, he said.

“Maddi was effectively not functional for a few weeks and I was busy running the office,” he said, glancing through semi-rimless glasses at his wife seated next to him on their tan couch. “It’s very hard to do that and still give your other children the attention that they needed. I don’t think I did a very good job at that.”

Some things have changed in the Misheloff residence in the last three decades. Ilene’s older brother Rob’s bedroom is now a guest room and her twin brother Brian’s bedroom is now a computer room. A thick, yellow ribbon is tied to the lamplight at the front door of the home — a symbol of hope.

Photos of Ilene hang on many walls. A missing poster peeks through the slatted, cream-colored blinds of the living room that passersby can read from the Dublin sidewalk. A portrait of Ilene hangs in the home’s entryway, welcoming guests. Silver picture frames decorated with petaled flowers and gold trimming show Ilene standing with her curly hair wrapped in a neat bun with a red ribbon atop her head, standing in skates on the first-place podium for the 1987 Redwood Empire Classic ice-skating competition.

Ilene’s mom now is 69 years old. Her dad 74. Ilene’s 44th birthday is in March. She likely won’t be able to squeeze into any of the sequined skating costumes or sweaters from 30 years ago, Maddi Misheloff said, but that’s OK.

“They are in her room, because they are hers, so that’s where they will be,” her mom said, nodding her head and smoothing out her white cardigan against her lap before interlocking her fingers in silence.

Maddi Misheloff said she’s found a measure of solace in reading books, going on knitting retreats with friends, and knitting shawls, scarves and hats in her spare time. Recently, she’s kept busy on the Board of Directors of the Livermore-Amador Valley Water Management Agency, where she serves as an official representing the Dublin San Ramon Services District. She and Mike take trips to visit their oldest son, Rob, who lives in Nevada.

But they haven’t moved out of their Dublin home. And their landline phone number hasn’t changed — other than the 925 area code being added in 1998.

“This is our home,” Maddi Misheloff said. “This house has to be here when she comes home.”

The annual candlelit vigil and march for Ilene Misheloff is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. at Wells Middle School at 6800 Penn Drive in Dublin on Wednesday.

Anyone with information about Ilene’s disappearance should call the Dublin Police Department at 925-833-6638 and reference case No. 89D0252.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor