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Every evening, just before the clock strikes six, Everton Dilworth reaches for his phone, a habit he hasn't been able to break recently.

"That's when she usually calls and says, 'Daddy, I'm home,'" he told THE STAR, his voice cracking under the weight of memory. "We always check in." His daughter, Anisa Dilworth, a first-year pharmaceutical science student at the University of Technology, Jamaica, has been missing since May 6. The 20-year-old, who is originally from Montego Bay, St James had only recently started living alone for the first time in a self-contained student accommodation on Gordon Town Road in St Andrew. According to her father, she had just completed her end-of-year exams and was looking forward to a reward trip, a Caribbean tour. Now, family members are clinging to hope in the face of gut-wrenching uncertainty.

"I anxiously look at my phone every evening at 6 o'clock, hoping it lights up with her name," he said. "But it doesn't ring." Dilworth's phone hasn't stopped ringing, just not for the reasons he hoped.

"People are calling, saying they're willing to help and is offering money for any information. But I know it's a scam. I ask them to send a photo or something she would know. If they can't, I know they're lying," he said.

Between sorting through hoaxes and holding on to hope, it's the last conversation with his daughter that plays on loop in his mind.

"On the morning she went missing, she told me how her previous exam went, what she had for breakfast, and what her plans were for the rest of the day. It was our regular morning check-in," he recalled. "She even sent me a past paper link I needed to help a cousin. It was a regular convo. I didn't expect that conversation to be the last." By that evening, when her usual call didn't come in, Dilworth's instincts kicked in.

"I sent someone to check her apartment, and she wasn't there. I checked again the next morning. Still no sign. That's when I knew something was wrong." When they entered her apartment, all her essentials were still there including her purse with her driver's licence and school ID. Since then, both the police and members of Anisa's family have launched search efforts. Now, with each passing day, the weight of not knowing becomes harder to bear.

"It's really hard," he admitted. "Her grandmother is taking it real hard. We're a close-knit family, and this is a big blow for us." To those who don't know Anisa, her father paints a picture of a determined yet quiet force.

"She's a cool person, a go-getter, but she internalises things more than she expresses them. Very business-oriented, athletic, and caring."

As a single father, the stories he shares about raising her are stitched with pride and tenderness.

"We talk about everything, ever since she was small." Their relationship, he said, was built on trust and freedom to choose her path.

"We made a list of career options. I suggested becoming a doctor, and she said, 'No mi cya manage the blood,' and chose pharmaceutical. I didn't object. I allowed her to make her decision." Adding to his worry, Dilworth revealed that Anisa is asthmatic.

"I know her so well that if I heard her on the phone, I could tell if her asthma was acting up. I'd say, 'You need to take your Ventolin or your Seretide.'" If she can hear him, Dilworth has only one message, "Come back home".

"We're waiting on you. We miss you dearly. We miss your laughter, your jokes. We just miss you," he said.

Senior Superintendent Mark Harris of the St Andrew Central Police Division said lawmen are receiving technological assistance form JamaicaEye, the island's national CCTV surveillance system.

"We found a vehicle that we believe she was last in, and the owner of that vehicle is in custody," Harris told THE STAR. "The person in custody admitted that he took her to South Grill and that she called him and he dropped her back home the day before."

"Through Jamaica Eyes technology, her phone last pinged in Portmore, that was the last place we tracked her," he added.

Despite those developments, Harris said the search continues in Kingston, St Andrew and St Catherine.