VANCOUVER - The mother of one of serial killer Robert Pickton's victims says she tried repeatedly to report her daughter missing, only to be told by an employee at the Vancouver Police Department that the young woman was probably just out partying somewhere.

Marion Bryce testified at a public inquiry Friday that she didn't know the name of the woman she spoke with a decade ago, but her account is similar to other family members who said a clerk at the force's missing persons department was dismissive, rude and racist.

The police department has been attempting to portray that clerical worker as someone whose scornful attitude didn't reflect the culture of the force or its officers.

Bryce's daughter, Patricia Johnson, disappeared in the spring of 2001, and her absence was noticed almost immediately.

She said Johnson was a caring mother who always made a point of calling on her two children's birthdays and Christmas. But there was no phone call on her son's birthday in March that year.

Bryce said she went to the Vancouver Police Department's station in the city's Downtown Eastside the next day and eventually ended up on the phone with someone in the missing persons unit.

"I reported my daughter missing, and she told me, 'Oh, she'll just show up, she's just out there partying because she's a working girl,"' Bryce told the public inquiry.

Bryce returned the following day with photos of Johnson, but she said the clerk in the unit refused to see her and instead instructed her to leave the photographs with the front desk and repeated her earlier comments.

"The same thing, 'She'll eventually show up, she's out partying, she has a drug habit, she'll eventually show up,"' Bryce said.

"She was very nasty on the phone, very snappy."

Johnson's remains were eventually found on Pickton's farm after police executed a search warrant in February 2002. Pickton was charged with Johnson's murder, but that charge was among 20 that were stayed after Pickton exhausted the last of his appeals last year.

Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder, but the remains or DNA of 33 women were found on his farm. He claimed to have killed 49 women.

Bryce said she called police several more times after her initial attempt to report Johnson missing but didn't hear from the force again until June, when she was contacted by a detective after Johnson's sister made a missing persons report of her own.

She was interviewed several times by different detectives, but she said those conversations didn't go well.

"Because the questions I was being asked, I felt like I was being interrogated," Bryce said.

"They weren't doing anything for any of the girls."

A lawyer for the Vancouver Police Department suggested the force's officers did take Johnson's case seriously once a formal missing persons file was finally taken in June.

Tim Dickson noted investigators spent months looking into Johnson's case and following up on leads.

Dickson said they ordered photographs of Johnson, checked her welfare and driving records, and looked her up on the Canada-wide police database.

He said an officer visited a sex worker drop-in centre in Vancouver to pass around Johnson's photo and followed up on tips that she was living in either Montreal or Mayne Island, B.C., or had been killed and dumped in a sewer but none of those tips proved to be true.

The file was eventually passed to a joint investigation involving Vancouver police and the RCMP looking into missing women files, and Johnson's name and photo were added to a poster of missing women later in 2001.

Bryce said she wasn't aware of everything police did.

Dickson finished with an apology, similar to apologies the force has issued during the past year.

"Allow me to say on behalf of the Vancouver police that they are very sorry for your loss, very sorry that Mr. Pickton was not caught sooner, and very sorry that you found your interactions with the department to be intimidating and frustrating," Dickson said.

The inquiry is now on break until Jan. 14, when it will hear from an official with the RCMP who conducted a review of that force's work.

Supt. Bob Williams' report paints a relatively positive picture of the RCMP investigation, concluding Mounties worked well with their counterparts in Vancouver and that "nothing would have changed dramatically if those involved had to do it over again."

The RCMP has never publicly acknowledged failings with its investigation, or offered an apology like the one issued by Vancouver police.

After that, an officer with Ontario's Peel Regional Police who conducted an external review will appear, followed by officers who were directly involved in the investigation of missing women and Pickton.