69th ARTICLE: Mom won't give up hope for daughter

Calgary Sun

April 15, 2007 

Mom won't give up hope for daughter 

CALGARY -- A year after a young Calgary woman mysteriously vanished in Sin City, her mother is hoping that spotlighting the disappearance on a U.S. talk show will bring her daughter home.

Glendene Grant is flying to New York City on Tuesday to tape an episode of the Montel Williams Show about women who get lured into the sex trade and wind up missing.

Jessica Foster, 21, disappeared in March 2006 after travelling to Las Vegas, where she wound up working as a prostitute and was, at one point, beaten so badly she was hospitalized.

Grant yesterday said her daughter's case needs major television exposure to be solved, pointing to the media frenzy surrounding the disappearances of Laci Peterson and Elizabeth Smart.

"I need Jessie to be that recognized, I don't believe she deserves any less," she said, adding the episode is expected to air in a few weeks.

"I still think she's alive and I think she's out there and needs to be found."

Frustrated with the authorities, Grant and ex-husband Dwight Foster hired a private investigator who found out the young woman, once a straight-A student, had travelled to the U.S. with a man she met at a reggae party who promised to pay for her trip.

Meanwhile, family and friends in Calgary are hosting a fundraiser tonight to collect donations for the family's ongoing investigation.

Foster said the money will help offset the cost of the private investigator and be used as a reward for information to encourage people to open up about his daughter's disappearance.

"We've tried appealing from a moral perspective ... and it just seems to me that you're going to have to dangle a carrot for certain people to come forward," he said about those who work in Las Vegas' seedy underbelly.

"It's the dark side of humanity that we're appealing to - money motivates these people," Foster said.