|
Local organization helps families of missing people find their loved ones
http://www.woodtv.com/global/story.asp?s=3522187&ClientType=Printable
(Grand Rapids, June 26, 2005, 6:00 p.m.) We could know later this week how a missing Grand Rapids man died.
A search team found 77 year-old Robert Tebeau’s body Saturday after he had been missing for more than two weeks.
Tebeau’s family thanked all of the volunteers who helped searched for him and they especially thanked the Missing You Foundation. In the last year or so, the foundation has played an important role in the searches to find missing people in West Michigan.
You’ve seen the faces, you’ve heard the passionate pleas for help, and you’ve seen the massive searches. Finding a missing loved one can be dangerous and difficult, but the Missing You Foundation vows to never leave a family stranded and distraught.
“We have never turned down a search,” said Shannon Dingee Kramer. “Whenever a family needs us we’re there. The only time we’ve turned down a search is when there’s criminal activity involved.”
Kramer, head of the Michigan-based foundation, has been a volunteer searcher in some of West Michigan’s best-known missing person cases. In March she helped lead the search for Mary Lands, the Marshall woman has been missing since March of 2004.
Four months later, there was Christopher Scott Hansen, who’s been missing since July of 2004.
In November, when Reverend Getulio Rodriguez disappeared from a parking lot, the foundation stepped in to help. Hunters found him dead a month later from an apparent suicide.
Recently, the Missing You Foundation helped family and friends search for Todd Geib. The Muskegon County man disappeared June 11. Kramer says a family can never have too many people looking for a missing loved one.
“They need to know in the bottom of their hearts that everything that can be done is being done and that’s the bottom line,” Kramer said.
She and her volunteers plan every search effort with optimistic and hopeful attitude. But Saturday proved every search doesn’t yield positive results.
A search team found 77 year-old Robert Tebeau dead inside a heavily wooded area behind the Kent County Jail. He had been missing for more than two weeks. Still, Teabeau’s family was grateful for the foundation’s efforts, despite the disappointing outcome.
“The Missing You Foundation was the one who pulled this off more than anything,” said Fred Gambino, Tebeau’s son-in-law . “Not only did they do a good, job but they had the people working for them do a good job. They did a good job and they did everything they were asked to do and then some.”
All of the members of the Missing You Foundation are volunteers. The foundation is funded through federal grants and donations.
To learn more about the Missing You Foundation, click on newslinks on our home page at woodtv.com
|
