186th ARTICLE: Family, friends still searching for missing woman

The Cochrane Eagle

November 11, 2009

Family, friends still searching for missing woman

by Sarah Junkin

A Cochrane woman whose friend abruptly vanished almost four years ago is anxiously waiting to learn the identity of a recently found body.

When Jessie Foster, 21, first went missing in March 2006, friends and family members back in Canada were immediately alarmed, and her Cochrane friend Shannon Koyata said she was stunned to learn that she had simply vanished.

Foster had been living in Las Vegas, but kept in touch with her mom and sister in Kamloops so frequently that loved ones knew immediately that something was wrong.

In addition, the man she’d been living with, Peter Todd, claimed she’d simply moved out — something her mother Glendene Grant says is ridiculous, in part because she’d left her cosmetics and hair paraphernalia on the bathroom counter.

Her cell phone ceased being used as did her credit and bank cards.

The family hired a private investigator, who uncovered the disturbing fact that Foster had been working as a prostitute in the Nevada town, and that she’d once been so badly beaten she’d been hospitalized.

“I do believe Peter knows more than he has told us,” said Grant.

She spends virtually all of her time trying to track down new leads to keep her daughter’s memory alive and bring awareness about human trafficking to the front of people’s minds.

“I’m so absorbed in it I can’t remember what it’s like not to have a missing daughter,” she said.

“When she first went missing I realized then I would never again be the mom I was before.”

Shortly after Foster’s disappearance, her friend Koyata and Foster’s sister Crystal organized a fundraiser at the Texas Gate to help raise funds to pay for further investigative work.

But that seems like a long time ago, said Koyata, who has gradually moved on with her life.

“There’s a lot of wondering still if she’s ever going to come back,” she said.

“I hope she is but at the same time I’ve sort of gotten used to the fact she’s gone. It’s scary.”

Over the years, when a body turns up in the Vegas area, Foster’s family holds its collective breath until the identity is known.

“I don’t feel she’s dead,” said Grant. “I feel very much that she’s alive.”

She added she can’t imagine the point at which she’ll end the search for her daughter, once a straight-A student.

“I’ll never give up,” she said.

“I can’t stop because it hurts so much in the worst way. If I ever gave up it’s be like I’d given her up.”

But for Koyata, the silence has been discouraging.

“That’s the hardest part is the not knowing,” she said with a sigh.

“And now another DNA test. I don’t know how long that will take or what it will tell us.”