HAWKINS COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) — While 5-year-old Summer Wells remains missing, the child’s Sabbath School teacher described the close bond the two share.

“Whenever I was helping teach Sabbath School, she was in my lap, and sometimes it was hard to teach because she wanted to be in my lap, holding me and hugging me,” said Robin Lane. “I just discovered that it was actually easier for me to hold her and let her love on me and hug me and teach with her on me than it was to make her sit in the chair.”

Lane described Summer as a loving, fun girl who enjoyed helping and putting smiles on other people’s faces.

“She was a helper — she wants to help,” Lane said. “She loves to love, and I just loved her little arms around my neck all the time.”

Lane said she was at her own daughter’s dance recital when she received the news of Summer’s disappearance.

“I was taking my little girl’s pictures before her dance class,” Lane said. “And I noticed I was missing calls from [Summer’s mom] Candus. Before I even had a chance to call her, she messaged me again on Facebook Messenger, and she was just in panic mode. She said, ‘Summer’s gone. We can’t find her anywhere. The police are here searching,’ and I said, ‘I’ll be right there.'”

According to Lane, she arrived at the Beech Creek area around 9 p.m. on June 15 — the night Summer was reported missing.

“I was ready,” Lane said. “I was like, ‘Let’s do this; let’s go to get the flashlights out, let’s get some snacks in our bags, and it was going to be an all-nighter. And [law enforcement] wouldn’t even let us go up there.”

With police blocking the entrance to Ben Hill Road, Lane said she offered assistance the only way she could.

“We showed them some pictures of Summer,” she said. “The police didn’t have very good pictures of her, or some of them hadn’t event seen a picture of her yet.”

Later that night, she was granted access to the Wells’ home.

“At that point, there’s really nothing I could do,” she said. “They just needed someone to pray with them. You feel really helpless in that situation because you want to do something, but we couldn’t. So, we prayed, and we just hugged on them and loved on the boys, and they, of course, were just shattered and just as confused as was I.”