♪ this is "nightline." >> tonight, without a trace. >> she left, she never came back. >> a young mother and child disappear. their family still left with questions 23 years later. > what can i do? what can i do? i would turn up empty-handed. >> we're with the good samaritans, adventures with purpose. diving to get answers. >> how can we get out again, when can we go and help more people? >> inside, how this duo cracks open decades-old cold cases. plus the kardashians back in the spotlight, shining brighter than ever, sitting down with robin roberts, taking us behind the scenes from chloe and tristan's breakup -- >> he's just not the guy for me. >> to what really happened in

vegas between kourtney and travis. now the new man in kim's life. >> how serious is it? where do you see this going? ♪ ♪

o er tn.♪ ♪ best bites. best vibes. ♪ ♪ california, hands down. ♪ ♪ go on and check my drip. ♪ ♪ take a bite. feelin' fit. ♪ ♪ we're breaking the mold. ♪ ♪ estado dorado. ♪ ♪ shining like gold. ♪ ♪ estado dorado. ♪ ♪ vive en el estado dorado. live in the golden state ♪ ♪ thanks for joining us. tonight, a family's pain.

it's been decades since a young mother and her small child left home, never to be seen again. could their loved ones ever find out what happened? a team of volunteers called adventures with purpose offers them and countless others hope. here's abc's bob woodruff. >> peek-a-boo! >> my daughter is a little fireball. just a little ball of energy. she's excited, she's always happy and smiling. she brings a lot of light to my day. >> reporter: there's a hint of magic in this family. to the outside world, baby oakley hasn't a single care, wrapped up in the loving arms of mom and dad. but for desiree carpenter, the love she shares with little oakley is an opportunity to give her baby girl something she

never had herself. >> i never grew up with a mother, so i didn't have that to go off of. so i try my best to overcompensate for her so that she knows, like, i'm here for her, i care for her. you know, i try to give her that relationship with her mom that i will never have with mine. >> reporter: on a warm windy evening in september, 23 years ago, desiree's mother, 19-year-old samantha hopper, dropped off then 4-year-old desiree at her grandmother debbie's house before driving off with her 2-year-old daughter, kourtney. >> she always said she loved me. and so she left. she never came back. and they just went on and on and on. i sat on my front porch watching the road.

she never come back. >> reporter: samantha disappeared without a trace. despite a lengthy police investigation that went on for two decades there were no signs of her or her young daughter, kourtney. vanished and missing for more than 23 years. >> i feel that so many missing person reports, that every time you do that, you have to give them a picture. and i don't have no pictures left. i don't have nothing. >> reporter: despite the pain, despite the anguish, samantha's case tragically is anything but unique. every year, more than 600,000 people go missing in the united states. it's been called the nation's silent mass disaster. a trend that presents an alarming reality for families in law enforcement.

hundreds of thousands of people to search for across millions of square miles of this country, by authorities with limited time and resources. >> it's a profound problem for law enforcement. i have worked dozens of missing persons cases. and they take an inordinate amount of time. and let's face it, local law enforcement is really not equipped, either manpower or money-wise, to do that. >> i lost hope. i just got to a place where i was like, there's no way she's alive. she just can't be alive. and i think when i had my daughter, that sealed it for me. i was like, there is no way. there's no scenario where i could see walking away from my daughter. it almost hurt more to think that she could be alive. >> reporter: while her hope may have been fleeting, her determination was not. unable to get anything concrete from law enforcement, desiree's search for answers took her to an unlikely place.

youtube. >> let's start at the very beginning. >> reporter: and a group of guys with a boat, some sonar, some diving gear, and a willingness to search in places where others could not. >> i had a friend. she was in a facebook group with me. somebody had posted that there was a diver coming. my friend saw it, tagged me in it, telling me, you need to get in contact with these people and see, you know, if they can help you. >> reporter: they are adventures with purpose, a team of volunteer divers scouring the country, looking for missing persons cold cases. jared lysic and doug bishop are not law enforcement, but a couple of friends coming from humble beginnings. >> so i started a youtube series called "adventures with purpose" in july of 2018. that was, you know, simply getting in the water, showing what was out of sight, out of mind, picking up pop cans, bottles, any gar damage that i can find. >> when did you make that shift from trying to clean something off the bottom of the lake, to

somehow trying to find all sorts of pieces of evidence from previous cases and find human bodies? >> it became a calling. you know, when a family reached out to me in the fall of 2019, they had seen these videos we were putting up on youtube, finding vehicles, pulling them out of the water. they reached out and said, we have a lost loved one in warrenton, missouri. we believe that he's in the water. we have a cell phone ping at this boat ramp. can you come help us? because nobody else is helping us. >> reporter: with so many families feeling there's nobody to help, jared and doug are filling a critical need, going where police and investigators rarely have the tools, technology, and skills to go. what's the percentage of success on this? when you start searching, how often do you get the results that you want? >> for the cases that we take on, between 15 and 18% is what we're currently solving. >> okay, so we have an 18% chance today that we'll find -- >> and for law enforcement, i'm

sure that the statistics are close to a half of a half of a percent of them solving a cold case. >> so when you look at people who have diving experience, that have sonar, that have the ability to look down into water for cars or humans or whatever it might be, some larger police departments will have those. but there are limited resources. and unfortunately, a typical missing persons case, if there's no indication of foul play, you're not going to get, by and large, law enforcement to use those resources to look for a person. that is the reality that these families, loved ones, et cetera, face. so individual private groups like this group of divers are just a godsend that they're out there. >> reporter: their adventures so far are making an impact. they say they've already solved 20 cold cases, and in the process, have become social

media sensations with more than 2 million subscribers on youtube, racking up more than 200 million views. >> it was, you know, such an incredible feeling. like, how can we get out again? when can we go and help more people? >> reporter: today on these ponds and lakes in central georgia, they're trying to find answers about a missing father whose family says has vanished without a trace and hasn't been seen for months. their work is in many ways a double-edged sword. a delicate balance between offering up hope and sobering truth. failure means another day of no answers for these grieving families. success means confirmation of their greatest fears. >> people call you up, the family, they contact you when they almost know for sure that they will not be found alive. >> that's a tough one. normally they're reaching out to us because they have had a

friend or family member that has seen our show on youtube or facebook. and we don't charge tehem a dim for our time. same thing with law enforcement. we don't send them a bill for what we're doing. we're working side by side with you and your family. as we find a target and we dive down on the target, we're holding our breath. family's holding their breath. and we're always hopeful that we're going to come up wh that day. >> reporter: on this day, they would not find that slim chance of success. not every family gets an answer to their questions. not every story has an ending. sometimes they will go years without a sliver of truth to go off of. >> he held my hand and he's like this guy going to find your mom. he really might find your mom. we used to sit there and watch his videos, and we'd just tear up thinking about what that would feel like, for him to be able to find my mom. >> sometimes in those slimmest of chances, on those most

wishful of hopes, they find an answer. in october, 23 years and 1 month after she went missing, jared and his team found samantha and kourtney. her car sitting in less than 10 feet of water, just a few miles from her home, ever since that fateful september night. >> for me, when i went up on the bridge and spoke with the detective who was over my mom's case, when i spoke with him, i was like, okay. and him pulling her purse out of the car and showing it to me. i was like, okay. this is it. i don't have to deny it anymore. i don't have to tell myself that it's not her to make it feel better. it's her. it was so painful. then it was almost like a relief. it was like a relief that she didn't leave me. she didn't leave me. she would have never left me.

>> reporter: people spend their lives searching for purpose, for meaning, for an aim to our lives that makes sense. but sometimes purpose isn't found in the things we do for ourselves, but the moments we give to others that makes all the difference. >> i don't have peace yet. people keep telling me, at least i have closure. i don't feel like i have closure. i have a hundred more questions than i had yesterday. what i do have now is i have a place where i can take my daughter one day, and i can take her to visit my mama and my sister. and i think for me, over time, i hope that i can learn to be okay with this. >> our thanks to bob. up next, robin roberts sits down with the kardashians.

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♪ their exceedingly public lives seem to hold few secrets. and yet they continue to fascinate and command headlines. "the kardashians" with a new show and loads of intrigue. here's robin roberts. ♪ welcome to kim headquarters here today. >> i'm looking to get to know you. i know that sounds funny because you've been on television all

these years. >> i know, i know. >> just to -- what is going to be different this time? >> i think we just evolved. we're all growing up. and the kids are, you know, a decade and a half older, and this is a new chapter. >> i love being famous. some people are made for it better than others. i would be lying if i said i didn't feel like i could handle it, if i didn't feel like i was made for it. >> reporter: the kardashian family has lived in the spotlight nearly their entire lives, creating businesses and a reality television empire spanning more than a decade. now just a year after "keeping up with the kardashians" went dark, the famous family launching a new series on hulu, "the kardashians." >> we've had so much time off, we've kind of gone into our own worlds. i feel this season is really different. it's about our individual lives.

>> one thing fascinating about kim kardashian is her love life. i think there's nothing more fascinating than what she's experiencing right now. >> kim and kanye together were such a perfect storm of genius and madness and modernity. >> kanye brought kim kardashian to a whole new level because he was in his own right a legitimate, talented celebrity. >> i think that legitimacy was critical, because it gets them into rooms that they were unable to get into before. >> reporter: after nearly seven years of marriage and four children together, kim kardashian filed for divorce from kanye west last year in february. >> they're in the middle of what is now one of the most intense divorces we've seen in a while. >> kim kardashian and kanye west parenting issues making headlines. >> they share four children. she has been dating "snl" star pete davidson. >> kanye has used every form of social media to dog kim, her family, her choice of boyfriend.

he has a music video where he appears to bury pete. and it's just interesting to see how a flame can burn so bright, but it can tear doug everything as it's blown out. >> was it difficult because of how kanye became so public? how have you been able to navigate that? >> you want to take the high road, and sometimes it's hard. but i think that at the end of the day, everyone has their own way of communicating. and i've always been like a champion of him speaking his truth, and i would always want that. >> how do you talk to your children about it? >> i'm really open and honest with them. you know, the younger ones don't understand as much. but as far as with my two older ones, they know what's going on, and you have to just really be there for them no matter what. even in this crazy life that we live. you just have to have a really open dialogue with your children. kanye and i have had conversations, we have to talk daily for the kids. so, you know, i hate that it had to play out like that. but when it comes to family, i mean -- kanye and i will always

be family. at the end of the day, i just want my kids to be happy and healthy and think the world of their dad. and they do. >> reporter: the kardashian sisters' romantic relationships have long been central to the being around their lives. >> the good news is there's been absolutely no shortage for the kardashians the last year. we have had very recently the news tristan thompson fathered a baby with another woman while he was dating khloe. kylie recently had her second child with travis scott. >> the men in the kardashians' lives, what is it that you all are looking for? >> i think at the end of the day, all of us just aspire to have, like, blissfulness. we want to be happy. we want to feel safe. >> tristan. so what is it about him with you? >> with tristan, i did feel incredibly safe in the beginning. and i felt really good for a time. i remember when he cheated on me

right before i gave birth, and i was able to still have him in the delivery room. so yes, it might have looked strange to the outside world. but when my daughter watches my home videos of it, those videos are going to be as pure and perfect as i was able to make them. i still think he's a great guy, he's a great dad. he's just not the guy for me. >> who is in the best place right now when it comes to being in a relationship? >> i think all my family members, besides me. i think kourt and trav are in an amazing lace. >> he was your friend, travis, now you all can't keep your hands off one another. >> yeah. it's so funny when we think about, this is us, can you believe it? we're kourtney and travis, who are friends. i felt deep down if we looked into each other's eyes, you know, made it physical, that it would just be over. >> reporter: the couple recently making headlines. hours after travis' grammy performance they visited a las vegas wedding chapel.

kourtney saying today, it was just for practice and no marriage license was signed. >> i think, like any good story, they manage to keep providing new storylines. >> kim has found new love. >> pete's great. pete's great. he's a really nice guy. he just makes her laugh. and she laughs all the time. >> where do you see this going? >> i mean, i am a -- like relationship kind of girl for sure. and i wouldn't be with someone if i didn't plan on spending a lot of my time with them. obviously i want to take my time. but i'm very happy and very content. and it's such a good feeling just to be at peace. >> our thanks to robin. for more of her interview with the famous family, watch "the kardashians," an abc news special, now streaming on hulu. we'll be right back.

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♪ that's "nightline" for tonight. watch all our full episodes on hulu. we'll see you back here same time tomorrow. thanks for staying up with us. good night, america. ♪ stack that cheddar, make it melt. ♪ ♪ cook it up, stretch it out. ♪ ♪ we're breaking the mold. ♪ ♪ estado dorado. ♪ ♪ shining like gold. ♪