Published Thursday June 11, 2004

Michael Kelly: Missing man's mother has hope

BY MICHAEL KELLY

We all know what it's like to miss someone - to long for him or her, to yearn for a touch or the sound of a voice.

But what if the person we miss might never come back?

Sunday will mark three years since Jason Jolkowski left home and headed for work, never to be heard from since. He hasn't called, used his cell phone or drawn money out of his account at an ATM.

He just - disappeared. No clue. No trace.

His mother, Kelly Jolkowski, won't give up. Jason's car still sits in the driveway of the family home near 48th and Pinkney Streets. The family has kept all his possessions.

"I have hope that he is alive," she said. "If you lose hope, you stop looking. That's not fair to the person who is missing or to other family members who love him and miss him."

But at this point, where do you look? Jason, a Benson High grad who worked part time as JJ the deejay at KIWR, wasn't the type to run away.

Kelly is realistic. Though not abandoning hope, she knows she may never see him again.

But she wants to help other families who find themselves in a similar situation. She has started the nonprofit Project Jason (www.projectjason.org), with a seven-member board. She has asked that the Legislature enact Jason's Law, a statewide missing person's clearinghouse.

And Sunday, the start of Missing Persons Week in Nebraska, she and cohorts embark on tour across the state to encourage people to prepare for the unlikely - the disappearance of a family member.

For example, child ID kits to give to authorities, providing vital information.

"Do people stop and think about preparation and being ready in the unfortunate event a child is missing?" she asks. "No, they really don't.

"When it happens to you, you are put in such a high state of anxiety, can you think straight? It's hard to think of things you need to do."

The week starts with a 9 a.m. Mass at Holy Name Church, where Jason was a lector. The Sunday before his disappearance, he read Scripture from Romans, including: "We gladly suffer because we know that suffering helps us endure."

Kelly has suffered, but she hasn't stopped living. To the contrary, she got her life under control.

She weighed 375 pounds, but began exercising, biking and dieting and lost an incredible 200 pounds. Hence, her self-given nickname, "the incredible shrinking woman."

Kelly, who works in technical support for weather data software, and husband Jim, a warehouse supervisor for Nebraska Furniture Mart, moved from Grand Island to Omaha 13 years ago.

Jason, she said, was close to his family. It would be totally unlike him to run away and not call.

His younger brother, Michael, saw him lugging trash cans to the curb. Jason planned to catch a ride to work at his other job at Fazoli's Restaurant, 80th and Cass Streets.

Police tell her they are baffled.

The best thing, Kelly says, would be for the phone to ring and to hear Jason's voice. Meanwhile, an inner voice tells her to keep working and help families, because lots of others suffer the pain of a disappearance.

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