MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI -- For the grandparents of Jessica Heeringa, the nearly 100 days their granddaughter, whom they affectionately call their "little pixie girl," has been gone feels like 100 years.

Sunday, Aug. 4, will mark the 100th day that the 25-year-old gas station clerk from Muskegon disappeared, allegedly abducted while finishing her night shift.

A suspect or suspects have not been identified and authorities have said they have very little to go on in terms of solving the case. A police official whose department is heading the case described the investigation as becoming "frustrating."

Heeringa has appeared to disappear without a trace – leaving behind at the gas station her purse, her vehicle, other forms of identification and money from a recently cashed paycheck.

“We’re rather discouraged and disheartened,” said Heeringa’s grandmother, Diane Homrich, of Grand Rapids. “No one trains you on how to handle this and where to go and what to do. Never in my wildest dream did we think this would happen. This always happens to other families.”

Heeringa, who is 26 now, disappeared on April 26 while working at the Exxon gas station on Sternberg Road in Norton Shores. Heeringa was working as a gas station clerk when a customer reported that she was missing around 11 that night.

The Homriches – Diane and Heeringa’s grandfather, Roman -- have made trips to the Muskegon area to help support Heering’s fiancé, Dakotah Quail-Dyer, of Muskegon, who is caring for the couple's young son with the help of Quail-Dyer’s parents.

Family and friends of Heeringa, and community members, have been meeting at the Pointes Shopping Center, adjacent to the Exxon station, on the weekends to bring awareness to her disappearance, sell T-shirts with Heeringa’s photo on them and hand out fliers.

“A few people still come by and I don’t want to lose touch with the community,” Diane Homrich said, adding that the Muskegon community has been “supportive” from the beginning.

“Those of us in the family, and I think in the community, still feel that she’s alive and out in that area,” she said.

Heeringa’s family has maintained that the woman would never voluntarily leave on her own and abandon her son, Zevyn.

“He’s 3 ½ and of course he doesn’t fully understand what’s going on. He loves Spiderman and he can stay focused on that for a while, but the hard part of the day is when he goes to bed and mom isn’t there to sing him his lullabies,” she said.

Heeringa’s disappearance has Homrich more aware of other missing persons in the nation. Since her granddaughter disappeared, Homrich said she is more sympathetic about other families going through the same thing.

“Now when I see a missing child poster, I pay attention, I watch,” she said. “When I’m in a restaurant, I look around. Before it didn’t faze me, I didn’t even look at a missing person poster before.”

Investigators press on

The case hasn’t yet gone cold, but it has become a “frustrating” investigation with very few solid leads and more questions than answers, said Norton Shores Police Chief Dan Shaw.

“We have a lot of pieces to the puzzle already, based on just the first few days. We do have different theories of who may be involved, but we don’t have anything concrete to connect people to this case. It will take just the right piece of information to make that happen,” Shaw said.

Shaw said there isn’t any piece of evidence to suggest Heeringa isn't alive, but then again “we have nothing to say she is.”

Police have not publicly identified a suspect in the case.

However, that’s not to say there aren’t individuals who police are keeping an eye on, Shaw said.

“There was no one taken into custody,” he said. “But we are still watching more than one (person). We follow evidence, we don’t go based on hunch. We have theories and all sorts of ideas.”

RELATED: Check out MLive's entire coverage of the Jessica Heeringa case

A task force once put together specifically for the Heeringa case has been dismantled at this point, Shaw said, but can easily be put back in place if there is a “solid” piece of information for the team to explore. As it stands now, there is one Norton Shores Police Department detective assigned to the Heeringa case on a daily basis. The rest of the department focuses on day-to-day incidents, Shaw said.

In the meantime, Shaw said the only real solid piece of evidence they have – the very small droplet of blood discovered outside the Exxon station that was determined to have belonged to Heeringa – didn’t really answer anything.

“Nothing has really changed with the investigation. There have been a lot of people giving us theories. That’s what we have been getting lately is just theories, not, ‘This is what we saw and this is what we heard,'" Shaw said.

The only thing anyone allegedly saw was an obscure silver or gray minivan near the gas station around the time Heeringa was last seen inside the business. A sketch was created based on a witnesses description of the driver of that van, but police can’t say without a doubt whether that man or the van is responsible for Heeringa’s disappearance.

A customer reported her missing around 11 p.m. after he pumped gas and entered the gas station to pay for it, but didn’t find anyone inside. That man was questioned and is not a person of interest, Shaw has said.

Since Heeringa’s disappearance, there have been plenty of roadblocks along the way as well, Shaw said.

Social media sites have helped, but also hurt the investigation. Some, whom had never even met Jessica, have started up Facebook pages in support of the missing woman, but even those efforts have caused the department some grief, Shaw said.

And media outlets have reported erroneous information at times, and one television news station hired its own private investigator, Shaw said.

“It could put us in a bad position. We have nothing to indicate that she’s still alive out there. We have nothing to indicate otherwise. If that’s the case, and we have a private investigator snooping around, could that cause something to occur, like, having her be moved again, if she’s alive?” Shaw said.

“I don’t think they know anything we didn’t know," the police chief added.

Heeringa is described as a white female, 5 feet 1 inch tall, about 110 pounds, with blond, shoulder-length hair and blue eyes. Heeringa is also known to wear wire-rim glasses. She was last wearing a blue collared shirt with "Sternberg Exxon" on it, the police chief has said.

Anyone with tips in Heeringa's disappearance is asked to contact Silent Observer at 231-72-CRIME (231-722-7463), the Norton Shores Police Department at (231) 733-2691 or 911.

Email: hpeters@mlive.com