Each year, families of missing Colorado residents read a list of names from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. More than 600 names were read in 2025, including Kelsie Schelling, who went missing in 2013 after driving to Pueblo to meet her boyfriend, and Paul and Sarah Skiba, a father and his nine-year-old daughter who went missing in 1999 along with their family friend, Lorenzo Chivers.
Schelling's mom, Laura Saxton, organized Colorado Missing Persons Day in 2016, when Saxton worked with former State Senator Jerry Sonnenberg to pass a bill declaring February 4 as Colorado Missing Persons Day. The date marks when Schelling went missing twelve years ago.
Some names have stayed on the list all these years, like the Skibas, or Christopher Abeyta, a seven-month-old who went missing in 1986 from his Colorado Springs home.
Saxton helps organize the event each year, reading a few of the names, including her daughter's.
"Every year, those names, the ones that have been on for the whole ten years, I definitely recognize them, and I know the family," she tells Westword. "It's instant recognition."
However, Saxton says that after nearly a decade of leading Colorado Missing Persons Day, she's starting to feel "lonely" as people move on or die. When Shelling first went missing, Saxton found a community of families with missing loved ones who were active in advocating for others and raising awareness, including Abeyta's family. She says that the original community has moved on, "and I really miss those people."
"A lot of those families that I was so close with have started to die, or maybe family members have been found so they don't participate anymore, and I realized how lonely I've been," Saxton adds. "All these people are wonderful, but we haven't made connections like we did in the beginning, when we first started this. ...I noticed I feel a little bit lonely when I come, even though the sense of community is nice."
Although Shelling's boyfriend, Donthe Lucas, was charged with her murder in 2021 and sentenced to life in prison, her body has never been found. Saxton says she doesn't want anybody to quit looking for her daughter.
Saxton has never seen anyone reunite with living loved ones, but she knows families who have found remains of the people they were looking for. She's also seen mothers die without finding their loved ones, like Abeyta's mother, Bernice, who passed away in 2017. Saxton admits she wishes she could be at peace the way those families and dead mothers are.
"I almost have a sense of jealousy, because they have their answer now. They're not suffering anymore, and I want that so badly, in whatever form it comes in," Saxton says. "I just don't want to be in pain anymore. I just know those mothers are at peace now, and they are reunited."
Raven Payment, a member of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Task Force, a Colorado Springs-based nonprofit that helps state agencies find Indigenous people and support their families, read the names of Colorado's missing Indigenous residents and applauded families for their advocacy.
"Your strength and your voices have called us to this moment, and your strength will call your family home," Payment said in front of the Capitol. "I admire how you not only show up for your missing loved ones, but how you show up for each other. While this is not for the happiest of reasons, this is still a community, and together we are stronger."
Chris Schaefer, CBI director, encouraged sharing information about missing people with law enforcement as even the smallest details can lead to a breakthrough.
"We need the support of our community. CBI needs your help with the support of information, reporting suspicious activity and keeping the stories of our loved ones alive," Schaefer told the crowd at the event. "A seemingly insignificant detail could be the key to unlocking a case and bringing a missing person home."
