33 replies to this topic

[Kelly]

Project Jason announces the featured missing persons in the July 2009 issue of the CDLJobs.com Online Magazine, which can be viewed at http://www.cdljobs.c...zine/JULY09.htm  This month's ad is on page 10. The site receives thousands of visitors per day.

Each month, CDLJobs.com publishes a full color ad in their popular online magazine which will feature 5-6 of Project Jason's missing person cases from across the country. The ad has clickable links which take the reader to additional information about the missing person, and a link to their printable poster.  Readers are encouraged to sign up for the AAN program and help with poster distribution. "You can be a Hero" is the theme of the joint venture.

Awareness Angels Network (AAN). AAN, begun by Project Jason in 2008, provides a way for the public to assist the families of missing persons. Missing persons posters designed specifically for the AAN program are disseminated via email to those enrolled in the program. Participants can then upload the posters to websites, print and place the posters in public areas, and forward them to their contacts. The program helps spread the word and increase the chances of finding the person.

In the July issue, the following missing persons were featured:

Brian Barton, missing from Federal Way, WA since 3/10/2005:
http://projectjason....php?topic=492.0

Monica Carrasco, missing from Balmorhea, TX since 10/1/2003:
http://projectjason....php?topic=778.0

Angela Finger, missing from Las Vegas, NV since 6/25/2006:
http://projectjason....hp?topic=3726.0

Emillie Hoyt, missing from Highland Beach, FL since 1/2006:
http://projectjason....hp?topic=3842.0

Melanie Metheny, missing from Belle, WV since 7/19/2006:
http://projectjason....php?topic=652.0

Brian Sullivan, missing from Rochester, NY since 7/7/2007:
http://projectjason....hp?topic=1267.0

You can read more about this program at http://projectjason....hp?topic=6319.0

[Kelly]

http://www.newswest9...4&nav=menu505_2

National Tour Reviving Reeves County Cold Case

Posted: Aug 21, 2009 10:21 PM CDT
NewsWest 9
by Wyatt Goolsby

BALMORHEA - A cold case involving a missing Reeves County girl could soon get nationwide attention. That's after volunteers from around the country made a stop in Balmorhea Friday afternoon. The group's focus was on Monica Carrasco, who went missing back in 2003. Her family said they'll never stop looking for her.

Friday was a day of prayer and hope for the family of Monica Carasco. Like many family's across the country, they're still searching for their loved one years after the disappearance.

"When people ask me how I feel, I tell them it's like a bad dream, like a nightmare. A living nightmare," Katherine Carrasco, Monica's mother, explained.

Carrasco said her daughter went missing nearly six years ago, and while the cold case in Balmorhea may fade from memory for some, she said she's never stopped looking.

Authorities in Reeves County said ever since Monica Carrasco went missing, they've used lots of resources and manpower to find her. However, with no concrete information law enforcement told NewsWest 9 it's frustrating.

Unforuntaely, officials with the group Community United Effort Center for Missing Persons said this happens a lot nationwide. However, by highlighting specific cases, they're optimistic it will lead to results. 

In the meantime, family and friends in Reeves County will continue to hope and pray. If you have any information about Monica Carrasco, contact the Reeves County Sheriff's Department.

[Kelly]

AAN Annual Poster Notify Sent to AAN Subscribers  Code 69

Help us find the missing: Become an AAN Member and receive notifications about missing persons via email.

Click here to become a part of the solution: http://www.projectja.../awareness.html

[Kelly]

Home for the Holidays 2009

Monica Carrasco, missing from Balmorhea, TX since 10/1/2003

Written by Kathy Carrasco, mother of Monica

On Oct. 2 2003, between 1:30am and 6:00 am, my daughter, Monica Carrasco disappeared from her aunt and uncle's home in Balmorhea,Texas. She was 16 yrs old at the time and will turn 23 yrs old this December 13th. All her belongings were left behind: her clothes, shoes, purse, and suitcase. The only thing that seemed to be missing was her bible, which I just bought her a few weeks before she disappeared.



The holidays are the most difficult to deal with. It's our faith in God and constant prayer that keeps us going. I'm so blessed to have my son John, my daughter- in- law Silvia, grand-daughter Cassandra, (3 yrs) grandson Santiago, (18months) my daughter Rachel, and my parents. For all those who give me encouragement and hope, I am truly grateful.

One of my fondest Christmas memories of my daughter, Monica, I wish to share is her wonderfully humorous giving and generous nature. Monica always tried to give everyone what they wished for. She knew all so well that her siblings and others would have the tendency to examine presents under the tree and try to figure out what the gifts were. So she devised a plan of putting gifts into larger boxes (adding a few heavy items such as rocks,etc) . On Christmas eve, it was hilarious to watch the family members opens Monica's specially wrapped gifts. When I say "big" boxes , that would be no exaggeration. Now visualize unwrapping a gift... opening a box... another box....another box...etc.

I started a "Hope"chest where I have been placing Monica's Christmas gifts. I hope and pray that she will come home soon. The Hope chest symbolizes that we never gave up hope and "believe she will come home.

I'd like to close by sharing a poem written by Monica:

                    My Winter Snowman

                                During
                             The winter
                        The weather is cold
                       And snowflakes drop
                    To the road so cold. The
                    Snowman that I build are
               very unique, they look like cotton
                and glow like stars. Winter to me
           is very special, it is the best season of the
            year because it is Christmas and your family
      get together, open presents and there is the birth of
                              Jesus Christ
                              Our Lord
                              And Savior


By Monica Carrasco
12-09-98

Note: Non-registered members can leave comments at this site:
http://voice4themiss...a-carrasco.html
(Comments are moderated)

[Jenn]

NamUs profile for Monica: https://www.findthem....org/cases/5244

[Kelly]

http://www.kxan.com/...mployee-talents

Art show reveals city employee talents
Portraits of missing kids paint a picture of pain

Updated: Wednesday, 05 Jan 2011, 10:41 PM CST
Published : Wednesday, 05 Jan 2011, 7:14 PM CST

   * Jim Swift

AUSTIN (KXAN) - The gallery space in the City of Austin's Mexican American Cultural Center is big and bright. The sun streams through skylights and spotlights are trained on dozens of sculptures and paintings. They all have one thing in common: They were created by employees of the City or by members of employees' families.

The exhibit marks the eighth year in a row that the National Arts Program Foundation has mounted the show here with the help of VSA Texas , an organization devoted to opening doors to the art world for people with disabilities.

"This was a way to make the arts accessible, a different version of the term, accessible, as in: Anybody can be a part of the art scene here in Austin," said VSA Artworks director April Sullivan. "To show their art at the MACC, I mean, that's a pretty amazing venue."

Despite being somewhat outside the VSA Texas box, the organization jumped at the chance to work with City employees on the project.

"We get funding from the City; we work a lot with the city on programs," Sullivan said. "So just to be able to meet those employees on that level, as artists, was interesting to me. And I've gotten to know all these artists very well; it's been fun."

It's been fun because Sullivan has seen the glee in the eyes of many of the artists who are showing their work for the first time in their lives.

"It's hard sometimes to think of yourself as an artist or to put yourself out there like that," she said. "So to have a program that is easy to enter; anybody that enters is accepted as long as they're an employee or a family member of an employee, and as long as their artwork meets the requirements, it's accepted into the show. Then once it's hung, it's juried and we give out cash prizes and people really like that recognition of their talents."

The exhibit levels the playing field for participants, dividing the pieces into categories like youth, amateur, intermediate and professional. Austin City Manager Marc Ott's drawing titled, "Portrait of a black man," for example, hangs next to a photograph shot by an employee in the City's water utility department.

"It's for everyone, not just professional artists," Sullivan said. "So [it's] a way to get everyone into a gallery space, to be a part of an exhibit, even if they never thought they could do that before."

One artist from the exhibition that is showing for the first time is Kathy Carrasco. She qualified for the show because her son is an Austin police officer.

"He said that it would be a good idea for me to show my art work," said Carrasco, as she unpacked a portfolio filled with portraits of children.

The kids have one horrifying thing in common. Each of them is missing, vanished, leaving an enormous hole in the hearts of their family members. For Carrasco, it's her daughter, Monica , who was 16 years old when she disappeared.

"I tell people it's like a nightmare," said Carrasco. "It's like a bad, bad dream and you can't wake up."

The Carrascos were living in the west Texas town of Alpine in 2003. Monica played basketball at school and was deeply religious, her mom said. But there was trouble brewing. Monica's father was battling cancer when he suffered a fatal heart attack. The girl had her own physical problems, as well.

"She was anorexic," said Carrasco. "She was getting counseling and therapy, but the problem was getting her to eat. She felt like food was bad; it was making her fat, that she was fat. But she wasn't; she was like 100 pounds and she felt she was fat."

Things then took a turn for the worse.

"She stopped eating and drinking water, so I had to put her in the hospital," Carrasco said. "She didn't like that but, you know; she was very sick."

Doctors put the girl on medication and sent her home. But Carrasco was working full-time and couldn't stay home with her daughter. So she went to recuperate in the home of her aunt and uncle in the nearby town of Balmorhea.

Two weeks later, the relatives woke up around 6 a.m. and found Monica gone.

"All her stuff was left behind: Her bags, her luggage, her shoes, her clothing were all left behind and she was missing," said her mother.

In fact, a thorough search revealed that Monica had left home wearing nothing more than a nightgown. She was barefoot. Only one thing was missing from her room: her Bible. The girl has not been seen since.

Carrasco began to paint. Working with watercolors, she produced one portrait of her daughter after another. As her understanding of the hurt of missing children grew, she started painting portraits of other vanished kids, as well.


Painting of missing Jason Jolkowski, son of the Project Jason founders

"It's something I never thought would happen to me," she said. "You see posters, you know, at Wal-Mart and you walk by and you really don't pay attention. So this is why I do the paintings because I want people to see their faces, to see their eyes, to see the innocence that they have. I want them to feel what I feel when they see their faces. The more you see their faces, the more chances that they might be recognized and reported and go home to the family that loves them and misses them."

As for Monica, seven years after the disappearance, Carrasco refuses to quit looking.

"I always try to think positive and hope that she's well," the mother said. "I feel it that she's somewhere, that she's alive and well, and I feel like she wants to come home but for some reason she can't. That's how I feel."

Shortly before she vanished, Monica was starting to fool around with a new home video camera. When Carrasco looked at the video her daughter had shot, she found one six-second clip of Monica laughing into the camera lens.

"Hi, welcome to Monica's world; hope you enjoy it," she said.


Painting of missing Monica

Carrasco still lives in that world. She cherishes a few photographs of her daughter and she keeps working on the portraits of her and the other missing kids.

"They're somewhere out there," she said. "We have to keep looking; we can't give up. There's people that love them. We love them and we miss them and we want them to come home."

Carrasco's work will hang with the rest of the exhibit through Jan. 15.

The Mexican American Cultural Center is located at 600 River Road near Downtown Austin.

[Lori Davis]

http://news.blogs.cn...ple-in-50-days/

50 people in 50 days: Texas teen disappears in middle of night
Monica Carrasco was 16 when she disappeared in 2003.

March 24th, 2011
11:27 PM ET

Editor's note: Nancy Grace's new show on HLN, "Nancy Grace: America's Missing," is dedicated to finding 50 people in 50 days. As part of the effort, which relies heavily on audience participation, CNN.com's news blog This Just In will feature the stories of the missing.

This is the 49th case, and it was shown Thursday night on HLN.

Monica Carrasco was 16 years old when she disappeared in the middle of the night from her aunt and uncle's home in Balmorhea, Texas, in October 2003.

The last time they'd seen her was around 1:30 a.m., before she went to sleep. The room she was staying in had a door to the outside, which wasn't locked when officers checked the home.

Monica was said to have had difficulty dealing with the death of her father three years earlier. She was under a doctor's care and needed medication.

Canines with the border patrol did a sweep of the area and were unable to pick up any scent of her. Since then, police have received thousands of tips, but none that have led anywhere.

[Kelly]

http://cbs7.com/mult...orpN5k.facebook

Reeves County Reopens Carrasco Cold Case

Posted: Friday, March 27, 2015 8:00 pm
By Lauren Lanmon

Balmorhea - More than 12 years ago a 16-year-old girl from Balmorhea went missing. Now, the Reeves County Sheriff’s office says it’s time to launch a full investigation to find Monica Carrasco.

“At six o’clock in the morning they went to wake her up and she was nowhere to be found,” said Reeves County Sheriff Art Granado.

It was a Wednesday in October, back in 2003. A day the small town of Balmorhea is known for on dozens of “missing person” sites nationwide. And, was the last day that 16-year-old Monica Carrasco was seen.

“She just disappeared and nobody knows if someone picked her up,” said Granado.

Monica had been living with her Aunt and Uncle in a home four miles east of Balmorhea. Items in her room were left untouched, all that’s missing is her nightgown she was wearing and her bible.

“There’s a lot of speculation that she probably went off with somebody,” said Granado.

But, like Sheriff Granado says, that’s just speculation along with many other theories floating around on the internet. He says, that’s not good enough for Reeves County, and it’s time to put an end to this story.

“We want to know where she is at, so like I said we have to find closure for her family,” said Granado.

So, after consulting with a cold case review team out of Austin, Sheriff Granado and his deputies are starting at the beginning and interviewing friends, family and residents as if it was the first day. “Something like this shouldn’t happen in small communities, because everyone knowns everybody, and if someone came in and took her everybody would have known, I mean, it’s difficult in a small community. In a big community sometimes you expect that, but in a small community it’s a bit tougher.”

If you have any information concerning this case, you are asked to contact the Reeves County Sheriff’s office at (432) 445-4901.
 

[Lori Davis]

http://www.newswest9...a-carrasco-case

 

Reeves County Sheriff Re-Opens Monica Carrasco Case

 

Posted: Apr 30, 2015 2:38 PM EDT

Updated: Apr 30, 2015 11:36 PM EDT

 

By Victor Lopez

NewsWest 9

 

BALMORHEA-- Gone but not forgotten. Reeves County authorities have re-opened a missing persons case, gone cold. They're hoping to heat things up and solve an, almost 12-year old mystery.

 

I spoke with the sheriff to find out why he's re-opened the case. I also spoke to residents, who shared their thoughts

 

Monica disappearance and this investigation.

 

Spring 2015 in Reeves County. Everything is green, thanks to recent rains. The cactus flowers are in full bloom. But, something is missing.

 

Monica Carrasco disappeared from Balmorhea, Texas, almost 12 years ago. It's sad to say that some people may not remember. But, you can rest assured that some people will never forget.

 

Monica disappeared on an autumn night, October first, 2003. The circumstances behind her disappearance are unknown to this day, so is any knowledge or clue of where she might have gone.

 

According to Sheriff Art Granado, "We've got to find closure for the family and we've got to find closure as well. We've got to find out what really happened to her, if she really ran away or something happened."

 

Sheriff Granado has been in office since 2013. He inherited his duties and the case from his predecessor.

 

"They went to bed about 11 o'clock p.m., that night. At 6 o'clock in the morning, they went to wake her up and she was not there," Granado recalled.

 

There were no signs of forced entry or foul play. Nothing seemed to be missing, either. That's strange, considering what family members told authorities.

 

"According to the aunt and uncle, she was an avid runner. She would run, all the time. They think, maybe, she went out running, that morning, and never came back," the sheriff explained.

 

There's something else that rings somewhat strangely, too.

 

"According to the facts, she left with only her nightgown and her bible. I think she was even barefooted," Granado added.

 

Monica's home was a couple of miles outside of town. The terrain out there, is rugged, rocks, cactus and thorn. Not a place you want to venture, at least, not without shoes.

 

Despite an exhaustive search, with the help of various state and national agencies, investigators came up with nothing. Sadly, the case went cold.

 

According to the sheriff, "There was a whole bunch of people. I think they brought some cadaver dogs. There were people on horseback, people on 4-wheelers, If I remember correctly."

 

Folks in Balmorhea say Monica was a bright, cheerful girl that everyone liked and got along with. So, there was no reason to think anyone would want to hurt her. There was, also, no reason to believe anything was bothering her, at least not to the point that she would just take off without telling anyone.

 

Sylvia Iniguez's daughter was Monica's close friend and classmate.

 

"We were concerned about her because she was getting really skinny." said Sylvia. “Then we heard that she was running a lot, that she would run in the mornings. After that, it's, all of the sudden, it's she's no longer here. They don't know where she's at, what happened to her, nothing."

 

Sylvia said the whole thing seem rather odd to her. She's also very critical of how law enforcement handled the original investigation.

 

"When somebody goes missing, they are right there, looking for her, concerned for her, which all of us were. But, it's just odd how they went about the situation."

 

Darla Harbour was once Monica's substitute teacher. She remembers the last time she saw her.

 

"The night before she disappeared she was Balmorhea School, for the orientation. She was there. She was happy to be there. She was with all her friends and she was very, very thin. I was told she was anorexic. I spoke with her. I said I was glad she was back in Balmorhea and the next thing I know, I see on the news that she's gone missing."

 

Monica was 16 when she disappeared. She'll be 29 on her next birthday, this December. In February, 2014, The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children developed an age progression photo of what she might look like, more than a 10 years later.

 

More than a dozen years have passed and there's still no sign of Monica. Sheriff Granado decided it was time to reopen the case.

 

Unfortunately, it is no closer to being solved, today, than it was before. So, what's the sheriff's plan? It's simple. Go back to square one.

 

While they are glad to hear the case has been reopened, some Balmorhea residents are, somewhat skeptical. You might say this "new" investigation is asking more questions that it's answering.

 

"Where was square one to begin with?" asked Sylvia, “and the people that you're going to talk to, what have they got to say now? We have our own questions.

We have our own opinions, but we can't really say because we don't know."

 

There are 3 possible outcomes to this case. As terrible as it is to consider, Monica may never be found. If she is found, the result could be good or bad. Her friends are ready, either way.

 

If you're still out there, I hope you have a family that loves you and that you're happy now," said Darla.

 

Sylvia says, "I don't think she is (alive). I really don't think she is. And if she is, i hope she's doing a whole lot better."

 

There's no doubt, somebody out there knows what happened to Monica Carrasco.

 

Sheriff Granado closed by saying, "If we hit the right spots, we'll, eventually, get to that, right person that's going to tell us what happened to Monica."