SAN DIEGO -- The activist father of kidnapping and murder victim Polly Klaas reached out Wednesday to the parents of missing second-grader Danielle van Dam, offering comfort and his unique insight into their ordeal.

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"Well, certainly I can emotionally give them support, and I can tell them what to expect ... and how important it is to really take care of yourself, despite the fact that it's so terribly difficult," Marc Klaas told reporters.

The founder of the Polly Klaas Foundation said he had conferred with Danielle's father, who seemed "to be doing as well as one could do" under the circumstances. The Klaas Foundation is a missing-child advocacy and crime-prevention agency created after Marc Klaas' 12-year-old daughter's 1993 abduction.

"I mean, when your life is dominated by fear for ... your daughter, it's kind of hard to function as a normal person," he said.

In turn, Damon van Dam expressed gratitude for Klaas' offer of a helping hand at the start of a 12th day of widespread searching for his 7-year-old child and intensive investigations into her presumed kidnapping.

"I'm very glad to have him here, and I think he'll help a lot," van Dam said.

From behind the wheel of a car in front of his house, the Sabre Springs father added that he and his wife, Brenda, had received welcome support from a number of other parents who have "lost children."

"It helps," he added. "But, um -- it still hurts a lot, you know?"

Rewards for information about Danielle's whereabouts reached $185,000 this week, even as police began acknowledging that the odds of finding her alive are waning.

"We are not real hopeful on her condition," SDPD homicide Lt. Jim Duncan said Tuesday.

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Still Some Hope For Danielle

Klaas, however, spoke more optimistically about the possibility that the Creekside Elementary School pupil has not met the grim fate his own daughter did.

"I think that if Danielle got through that first night, the chances are very good that she's alive, and I think people should keep that in their minds and they should go forward and try to find her," Klaas said.

Also Tuesday, authorities took a highly trained tracking dog through the van Dam home in hopes of turning up clues that will clear up the mystery of her disappearance.

Officers led the bloodhound, on loan from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, from room to room in the van Dams' northern San Diego house and through their yard late in the afternoon.

"We're going to try to pick up a scent," Duncan said. "This dog is different than the dogs we used the other day, and it's supposed to be maybe a little bit better-trained."

Investigators said they were unsatisfied with a canine search of the two-story home they conducted within the first few days of the 7-year-old's presumed kidnapping.

"The FBI has utilized this particular dog in the past, and they felt very confident in its abilities," Duncan said of the hound.

Officials would not say if the brown-and-black, floppy-eared dog seemed to have detected anything of value.

Danielle's disappearance 12 days ago has generated intense searching, heavy national news coverage and the offer of rewards.

A retired San Diego phone company owner named Don Blakstad Tuesday added his own $100,000 reward to the $85,000 in reward funds previously announced.

On Monday, the van Dam family offered $25,000 for their daughter's safe return and San Diego bail bondsman George "King" Stahlman put up $50,000 for information leading to whoever is responsible for her disappearance.

It is assumed that a reward of $10,000 offered by the Millennium Children's Fund still stands, despite a rather public rift between the charity's head and the van Dam family.

Blakstad's reward offer was based on the girl's safe return, according to his attorney, Charlie Becker.

A fund-raiser will be held Thursday night at the Pat and Oscar's Restaurant in Carmel Mountain Ranch. Proceeds will go to assist in the search for Danielle.

When they filed a missing-person report the morning of Feb. 2, Brenda and Damon van Dam told authorities that the last they'd seen of their daughter was when the father put her to bed after 10 p.m. the night before.

Since then, various law enforcement agencies and teams of citizen volunteers have searched the upper-middle class neighborhood and its environs, as well as large sections of the Imperial County desert.

The sun-baked region near Arizona became a focus of the investigation when authorities learned that a man who lives two doors away from the van Dams traveled there around the time the girl vanished.

The neighbor, 50-year-old David A. Westerfield, apparently took his recreational vehicle to a spot near Glamis over the weekend of Feb. 2-3.

Duncan said the investigation remained focused on the self-employed design engineer and off-roading enthusiast. Detectives have twice gone through his house with service dogs.

During those searches, officers carted off 13 boxes and bags full of household items. Included in those boxes and bags of evidence was an unknown amount of child pornography, according to 10News.

In addition, police impounded Westerfield's sport utility vehicle and the motor home he took to the desert.

Duncan said that a DNA sample submitted by Westerfield to police has been forwarded to the FBI crime lab in Washington, D.C.

Westerfield has hired criminal defense attorney Steven Feldman to represent him in the case, although he has not been charged with any offense.

No arrest in the case is imminent, Duncan said.