Loved Ones Hold Out Hope At NYC's First 'Missing Persons Day'
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – On Saturday, the first ever support event was held in New York City to match technology, information and people in an urgent effort to help find the missing.
On an east side street corner sat an unusual sign that might just lead to some desperately-needed answers.
"We're coming to look for my uncle," Regina Morales told CBS2's Steve Langford.
Morales's uncle, Gerardo Jacobo, vanished six years ago and she came to the city's first Missing Persons Day, hosted by the office of the Chief Medical Examiner, for help.
"It's been termed the nation's silent mass fatality," Mark Desire said, assistant director of the Chief Medical Examiner's Office.
As Langford reported, because of the staggering numbers of people reported missing every year, a new drive is underway to help those whose search seems hopeless
"We want to talk with the families, see if there's any additional information we can collect. Maybe there's some DNA samples out there that we haven't gotten in the past to help us identify their loved one," Desire said.
There were a reported 13,000 missing persons cases filed in NYC just last year, Langford reported; most of those people are found, but not all.
"We have done everything in our power to try to find our daughter and it's just been unbelievable," Mary Lyall said.
Her daughter Suzanne disappeared from her SUNY Albany campus in 1998. The family now runs a support group called The Center for Hope, offering advice they wish they'd had when their 19-year-old vanished.
"We insist that you go," Lyall said. "Make sure that the police take the information. There's no waiting period and people don't understand that."
"It's really heartbreaking when you don't know, you can't put closure on something," Jay Toole said, whose mother is missing.
Hart Island, the city's public burial site in the Bronx, is the final resting place for unclaimed and unidentified bodies, going back to the mid-1800s.
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