2 YEARS AGO, LONG DAYS OF DREAD BEGAN; FAMILY, POLICE RETAIN SLIM HOPE FOR ANSWER.

Byline: Jesse Hiestand Daily News Staff Writer

With leads exhausted and a $50,000 reward still unclaimed, friends and relatives of Kathy Silveri, who has been missing since Jan. 12, 1996, pray for a break in the case and keep their eyes on the sea.

As far as they can tell, the waters off Silverstrand Beach may hold the key to Silveri's disappearance on a balmy Friday evening nearly two years ago.

``I still think there was a guy who owned a sailboard who was involved,'' said Silveri's estranged husband, Gene Ball. ``It appears she had run into an old friend of hers from several years back and apparently he had offered to take her sailing some evening.''

It's a ``sketchy'' theory, he admitted, but there's little else to explain why the 43-year-old X-ray technician simply disappeared, confounding all who knew her.

Silveri was a dependable person who followed a routine, going running in the morning and riding her bicycle to and from work each day.

Co-workers later told detectives that on the day Silveri disappeared, they overheard her talking to someone on the telephone, agreeing to meet later that evening.

When relatives and neighbors were unable to reach her over the next few days, they assumed she had slipped out of town, perhaps to visit relatives over the three-day Martin Luther King holiday, Ball said.

Their concern turned to fear the following Tuesday when Silveri's car, bicycle, driver license, credit cards and her beloved cat - but not Silveri - were found in her house.

There was no sign of theft or a struggle.

``That's one of the things that makes it seem so suspicious because she had just withdrawn money from the bank on the way home and it was still on the dresser,'' Ball said. ``It's obvious she didn't intend to be gone for any length of time.''

Detectives followed hundreds of leads and clues over the next six months, but to no avail.

A $50,000 reward - $20,000 offered by the Ventura County Sheriff's Department and the rest by relatives - hasn't been claimed.

At the time she disappeared, Silveri was 5-foot-3, weighed 105 pounds and had long, curly brown hair. She wore tinted prescription glasses and a Timex Triathlon wristwatch.

The case remains open and investigators suspect foul play, said sheriff's Capt. Bill Montijo of the Major Crimes Division. Police still hope for the public's help in breaking this case.

``It's one of our active cases but it's just that we need information and if there's no information to pursue, it's kind of at a standstill,'' Montijo said. ``We're hoping for the best.''

Since the case was opened two years ago, sheriff's Capt. Larry Robertson, one of the lead investigators, has retired.

And adding to the Silveri family's grief, her 79-year-old father, Dante, was killed in August in a bicycle accident in his hometown of Bishop.

``It was just one more thing in the ongoing daily sadness,'' said Anne Ondrejko, one of Silveri's sisters.

Ondrejko says she holds no hope of again seeing her sister alive.

``But there's always hope that whoever caused this will be found and prosecuted,'' she said. ``We knew immediately there was foul play when she didn't turn up after the first few days. If there had been an accident, her body would have been found. But it wasn't.''

Ball, 52, said he has also lost hope that his wife of 17 years is still alive. At the time of her disappearance, they were separated but trying to reconcile, living just three blocks from each other.

``Maybe I'm not enough of an optimist but I don't really see anything in the cards right now,'' he said. ``We really haven't got any new information in probably the last year and a half or so. It's getting awful frustrating.''

That frustration is shared by people who knew and worked with Silveri, including Bill Higgins, acting general manager of the Channel Islands Beach Community Services District. Silveri helped form the community services district and was a member of its board.

The district plans to hold a ceremony Saturday, when a plaque honoring Silveri will be placed at the base of a newly planted pear tree in Pirkle Park. That tree was chosen because it blooms each January, he said.

``There's a possibility that, whatever happened, someone in the area heard something or possibly has some information,'' he said. ``And by doing these kind of public events on appropriate occasions, we hope the publicity might lead someone to make a telephone call so we can know what actually occurred.''

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PHOTO (Color) Kathy Silveri of Oxnard disappeared without a trace Jan. 12, 1996.