Colorado Missing Persons Day Remembers 606 People Who've Disappeared

Laura Saxton has been grieving since her daughter, Kelsie Schelling, went missing after driving to Pueblo to meet her boyfriend on February 4, 2013.

"It still hurts as much as it did in the beginning. I'm not in shock anymore, but the grief and pain is with me all the time, and I imagine it always will be," Saxton says. "It's hard to believe it's been eleven years. Some days it feels like it's been that long, and others it doesn't seem like it could possibly have been that long."

While she continues to grieve, Saxton has found a way to remember her daughter and support others: She appealed to state legislators to start Colorado Missing Persons Day in 2016. Other states already had similar events, and February 3 was earmarked as National Missing Persons Day back in 1983.

"It's such a lonely thing, and there's such a stigma about missing people. People kind of avoid you, don't know what to say," Saxton says. "But when we're here together, we're all in the same boat."

Saxton had already been advocating for families of missing persons at the Colorado Legislature when she convinced her then-state senator, Jerry Sonnenberg, to sponsor a resolution declaring February 4 as Colorado Missing Persons Day. When that date falls on a weekend, it's observed on Monday or Friday.

So on Friday, February 2, Saxton and other advocates, friends and family members of missing people gathered at the Colorado Capitol and took turns reading the names of 606 Coloradans who disappeared at least a year ago — including Kelsie Schelling — to "honor our loved ones," Saxton says. "We get to say their name out loud, which is something we don't get to do on a daily basis anymore, because they aren't here."

Schelling's boyfriend when she went missing, Donthe Lucas, was charged with her murder in 2021 and sentenced to life in prison. But her daughter's body was never found, and Saxton says she doesn't "want anybody to quit searching for Kelsie."

Like her, others still "can't lay their loved ones to rest," Saxton adds, noting that the crowd at the Capitol "was much bigger this year. This is the biggest crowd I think we've had."

In the crowd was Lindsey Paison, a private investigator who helps find people who've disappeared on the streets of metro Denver. She held up a sign reading "Bring Jeff Home," referring to Jeff Cornu, who went missing from Westminister; his family suspects he could be homeless. The last time anyone had contact with him was when his mom ordered a DoorDash to his hotel room in September 2020.

"Jeff's case is interesting because it shows how — even though it's inconceivable — a human being can be here one minute and literally gone the next," Paison says. "It's just the lack of leads or anything that could tell us where he went next. He was at the hotel, and then poof, gone."

A childhood friend of Paison's, Sarah Skiba, went missing in 1999 when she was nine years old. Sarah's father, Paul Skiba, and family friend Lorenzo Chivers also disappeared. Wednesday, February 7, will mark 25 years since they vanished, and Paison says that the Skibas and Chivers "were at the forefront of my mind while I stood up there" at the State Capitol for the Colorado Missing Persons Day observance.

"It still breaks my heart that there still hasn't been a resolution in that case. I'm profoundly sad for Paul's mom and Sarah's grandma, and I'm profoundly sad for Michelle Russell, Sarah's mom," Paison says. "I still credit that case to why I'm doing what I'm doing. It's still on my mind."
While Paison isn't familiar with all 606 names on the list that were read that day, a few other cases stood out, she says.

For example, there's Jance Varela, who went missing on June 1, 2022. He was forty at the time, and just a few weeks earlier had told his mother he'd been diagnosed with a brain tumor. He struggled with homelessness and an opioid addiction, and was last seen at a bowling alley in Fort Collins. 

His family has been asking for help, but no tips have come through.

"His mom has done a really, really good job as far as keeping him out on social media and getting him recognition that way, so there's a lot of people in the missing persons community that know about Jance," Paison says. "With the amount of recognition and social media awareness that has gone on about him, it would be highly unlikely that someone wouldn't have seen him or a tip wouldn't have come in by now."

Paison also has questions about the disappearance of Beth Aper, who went missing in the small town of Rush on August 21, 2022. Her husband last saw her walking down their driveway that night, then getting into a tan sedan. Paison finds it hard to believe that Aper disappeared so suddenly.

Britney Hartman, who founded Justice Takes Flight in 2018 to help people looking for loved ones after her two-year-old niece, Gabriella, was murdered, was also at the Capitol, holding up a sign with Beth Aper's name and photo. She's surprised that the case has had "absolutely no sightings, she just vanished," Hartman says.

Looking much further back, Paison mentions Douglas Meer, a 25-year-old Boulder man who went missing in 1982 while in Las Vegas. His mother last heard from him when he called to say he was out of money and coming home, but he was never seen again. A year later, his car was found in Mexico near the California border.

"You have to wonder what could have possibly happened to a young guy like that," Paison says. "I want to say cartel activity, but I don't know what the landscape was like back then. Maybe he met a group of people and they went to party it up across the border and something happened. It always struck me as odd."

Paison imagines that "support back then was not what it is now" for families with missing loved ones. "Who would they have ever gone to in the ’80s or ’90s to talk about what they're going through?" she asks. "Whereas now we have that little community that you saw at the Capitol." 

Still, Paison says, the biggest challenge to solving missing person cases is apathy. Saxton agrees; people need to pay attention, she says.

"On Facebook when you see a missing person, don't just scroll by it," Saxton advises. "When you hear something on TV, on the news, or an Amber Alert or a Silver Alert, don't discard that. Please listen, be aware, especially if that person is from your area. You never know: You can see them, you could help bring somebody home."

Audrey Simkins, an investigative analyst with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation who helps organize Colorado Missing Persons Day, says that she's never known anyone to turn up as a result of the annual event, "but there is always a first time."

And it can't come soon enough: Last year, Colorado received 589 new missing person reports.