Tuesday's developments have Collins' mother is shaken and concerned. There have been many leads over the past 30 years, and Ann Collins does not want to go on camera while the search plays out. But, she told Dan Noyes several interesting things by phone. For one, the search site on Masonic Avenue is just a block from where Kevin was last seen at the bus stop. But, just across the street from the search site, the Collins family rented an apartment to serve as the Kevin Collins Foundation -- their search headquarters. Ann says she would look out the window and wonder if Kevin was buried in one of those basements nearby.
"Part of me wants to know what happened to him," Ann Collins said in October 2012.
"And part doesn't," Dan Noyes asked.
"'Cause you're afraid to find out what it really was," Collins said.
For Ann, Kevin is frozen in time.
"His brothers and sisters are all grown up and he's still 10 years old," she said.
The search was intense for a time. Volunteers fanned out across San Francisco and Northern California. When the case made the cover of Newsweek magazine, thousands of leads came in but they never panned out.
"It's been 29 years and other cases are being solved and maybe it's time that Kevin will be solved," Collins said.
Ann told Dan Noyes in October and Tuesday by phone about what seemed to be the most promising lead -- someone spotted with Kevin at the bus stop.
"Two witnesses saw him supposedly standing on that corner near a man with a black dog," she said.
Ann says she remembers that police tracked down the man with the black dog. He had a house in Guerneville, but also lived on Masonic -- the same street as Tuesday's search.
"I don't know if anything ever came from it, but that was the only witnesses that remembered seeing him that evening on that corner," she said.
San Francisco police investigators told the I-Team back in October that they hadn't worked the case in years. We don't know at this point what lead to Tuesday's break in the case -- did an old lead came through or did our series of reports three months ago spur someone to call police?
