COLUMBIA – Down East law enforcement agencies used aircraft and all-terrain vehicles Tuesday to comb a large area in search of a Columbia teenager not seen since Saturday midnight.

Missing is Crystal Higgins, 17, who last was seen leaving a friend’s house in Columbia in her own car. She told her friends there that she was going home, but never arrived at the Saco Road residence.

Her cellular phone was used seven times between 1 and 1:30 a.m. Sunday to contact two more friends, but she left no message, according to those who gathered Tuesday afternoon at her home.

The calls were determined to originate from within a 15-mile radius of the Milbridge cellular tower, according to Washington County Sheriff Joseph Tibbetts.

Attempts to reach Higgins on her cell phone have gone unanswered, Tibbetts said. There is now a trace on the phone that would show – if just a single button were pushed – whether she is still within the 15-mile radius of the tower.

“This isn’t like her,” said Janis Lesbines, a friend who housed the young woman last fall and winter. “Something has gone terribly wrong.”

The Maine State Police have five troopers and three detectives involved in the search, which they are treating as a missing person case. The Maine Warden Service has five wardens working the case.

Sheriff’s deputies, also assisting the state police, on Tuesday distributed 100 posters of the young woman. She is considered stable and responsible, Tibbetts said.

“This is a very stable girl who works two jobs,” Tibbetts said. “She has never been late for work. But she hasn’t picked up the paycheck that is waiting for her at one of the jobs.”

The state police have set up a command post at the Pleasant River Ambulance Service on Route 1 in Columbia Falls.

Early Tuesday, a Maine Forestry Service helicopter and a warden service plane were used to search for Higgins’ car between Jonesport, Columbia and Harrington.

Those are the areas where authorities believe Higgins drove around with friends earlier Saturday evening, before her disappearance.

A state police plane joined the aerial search in midafternoon.

“If we find her car, we hope we will find her with it,” said state police Lt. Peter Stewart, who is overseeing the search.

The ground search is taking wardens and other volunteers down dozens of dirt and side roads.

Higgins does not live with her family. A senior in good standing at Narraguagus High School, she was legally emancipated from her parents just before she turned 16.

Her father is incarcerated at Down East Correctional Facility in Machiasport.

Since April she has been living with Debra Skeate, the mother of Tara Skeate, her best friend since fourth grade. Before that, Higgins had been staying since October with Janis Lesbine’s family, also in Columbia.

In between the two extended living situations, Higgins tried reuniting with her stepmother. That lasted just a few days.

Higgins is not known to have a boyfriend.

She was driving her own car, a gold, two-door 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier with Maine license plate No. 5794-LQ.

“She promised she would call me if she wasn’t coming home,” Tara Skeate said, taking a break Tuesday afternoon from combing the nearby roads on foot for any sign of her friend.

Higgins’ car is missing its mirror on the driver’s side, friends said as they talked between phone calls that came into the Skeates’ kitchen. The driver’s seat has a furry blue cover, and blue beads and an air freshener hang from the rearview mirror.

Tara Skeate reported Higgins’ disappearance to the Maine State Police on Sunday evening.

Higgins returned home Saturday after working one of her jobs until 8 p.m., then went out to meet some male friends at the Irving station in Harrington. Surveillance tapes at the store showed that Higgins was there four times through midnight, the group in the kitchen said.

Randy Urquhart, a Jonesport teenager, thinks he was the last person to see Higgins on Saturday night. They had driven around before returning to another friend’s house on the Webb District Road.

When she left around midnight, she told Urquhart she was heading home.

Higgins works at two Route 1 businesses, Elmer’s Country Store and the Pleasant River Drive Inn, both in Columbia.

At Elmer’s Discount Store at the Four Corners Shopping Center, friends used the copy machine to make dozens of homemade fliers they would post with Higgins’ photo.

Higgins recently received proofs from her graduation photos.

“She likes to pay for things herself,” Debra Skeate said. “She paid for the photos, and also bought her car and had her own insurance.”

Nancy Smith, another neighbor in Columbia, spent hours Monday and Tuesday in the Skeates’ kitchen, awaiting any news.

“This phone rang 40 times last night, and 100 times today,” she said.

Anyone with information on Crystal Higgins can contact the Maine State Police (1-800-432-7381) or the Washington County Sheriff’s Department (1-800-432-7303).