CHESTER - A massive search is under way from Dover to Chester and beyond as federal, state and local authorities investigate the disappearance of a University of New Hampshire student who vanished Tuesday night.

Investigators from the state Attorney General's Office, FBI, and Fish and Game have joined state and local police in the hunt for 19-year-old Elizabeth "Lizzi" Marriott, a sophomore and marine biology major who planned to visit a friend in Dover after classes Tuesday night but never showed up.

"We are marshaling all the resources possible to locate this girl," Associate Attorney General Jane Young said Friday.

Marriott's family has offered a $10,000 reward and is assisting in the search effort being coordinated at the Chester Police Department.

"We have no answers, a lot of questions and a lot of hope," her father, Bob Marriott, said from a room next to the police department where volunteers and others were organizing teams of searchers who spent Friday looking for clues along the sides of roads and other spots around the UNH campus and in nearby Dover.

Young said authorities were on the ground assessing the territory and terrain and that air and water searches were being considered as the weather improved.

"The morning proved challenging to put the helicopter up," she said.

Elizabeth's family and friends said it's unlike her not to come home or keep in contact with them. She even left handwritten notes of her daily plans at the Chester home where she lived with her aunt and uncle, Tony and Becky Hanna, while commuting to UNH.

"You think of all the nice outcomes and none of them wash to me. She would always come home," her father said.

He's trying to keep a positive attitude and is holding out hope that his daughter ran off for some unknown reason and will return.

"I would be so happy if that was the case. I'd hug her, I'd kiss her, and then tomorrow I'd say, 'What were you doing?' and she would be fine. What's left are things I don't want to think about. I may have to come face to face with them, but I don't want to think about them," he said.

Some have wondered if she may have had an accident and is off the road into the woods. Others fear she was the victim of foul play.

Marriott's family said the last time anyone had contact with her was Tuesday around 9 p.m. when she was in class at UNH and sent a text message to a friend in Massachusetts. In the message, Marriott wrote that she was planning to visit a female friend who lives in an apartment on Mill Street in Dover.

She never arrived.

It wasn't until the next morning that she was discovered missing when she failed to return home to Chester, family said.

Investigators pinged her cell phone, which indicated a signal around 9:30 p.m. in the Dover area. Another ping indicated that she was somewhere between Dover and Durham around 10:10 p.m., possibly in the area of Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, according to another aunt, Becky Tyning of Beverly, Mass.

Searchers have not found Marriott's car, described as a 2001 tan-colored Mazda Tribute with New Hampshire license plate 304-5397.

Marriott is described as 5-foot-5, about 130 pounds, with dirty blond hair and blue eyes.

Marriott's cousin, Tommy Hanna, 17, said she lived upstairs of his parents' home and while he heard her going to bed Monday night, he didn't see her. He said he left around 5 a.m. Tuesday before she awoke and that he hasn't heard from her.

Tommy, a student at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, left school early Friday to work on missing person posters.

Marriott has been living in Chester for about the last year and a half, her family said. She attended Manchester Community College and transferred to UNH this school year.

jschreiber@newstote.com