A handful of people gathered in the York Street parking lot across from Bell Park at 11 a.m. on Sunday morning. Most of those people were loved ones of Meagan Pilon, a Sudburian who vanished on Sept. 11, 2013 at the age of 15.
She hasn’t been seen since.
But that doesn’t mean people have stopped looking for her. Included among those people are Meagan’s aunts, Carol Martel and Tammy Martel, who attended the walk.
Carol said what may have happened to her niece and who, if anyone, is responsible is not as important as the closure the family hopes to find when Meagan is found.
“It’s hard, especially during the holidays. It’s not the same without her. I go to bed every night wondering,” she said.
She said the family doesn’t care about criminality or culpability, “just lead us to where she’s at,” Carol said.
“Help us clear our conscience — our family needs closure,” she said, adding that Meagan’s mother (her sister) passed away when the missing girl was six. “We want her to rest with her mom.”
For local Please Bring Me Home members, Julie Charette and Natashia PIckering, the walk is aout keeping Meagan’s name in people’s minds, to let them (and anyone else paying attention) that people are still looking for her, but also to raise awareness of other unsolved local missing persons cases.
Tips are still coming in regarding Meagan, but none have borne fruit. Charette and Pickering want anyone with information to know that all tips are anonymous — the information about Meagan’s fate and whereabouts are what’s most important.
They don’t want anyone with information to keep it to themselves out of fear of any repercussions for sharing what they know.
“Don’t be afraid to share all the information,” they said.
Please Bring Me Home is planning what they describe as “a big search” at the end of September. They can’t say the area that will be searched but the effort will involve a canine track.
Please Bring Me Home is fundraising to cover the costs of that search. You can find the GoFundMe campaign, which is at around $1,200 of its $2,000 goal, here.
Please Bring Me Home and it's members have assisted in locating 17 missing people, two of whom were sadly deceased, Charette and Pickering said.
Recently, the group’s work helped solve the case of Dale Nancy Wyman, a 22-year-old from Ottawa who vanished in 1980. Wyman was found after 40 years and had recently passed away of natural causes.
“This is an example of the power of social media and how important it is to keep sharing —
someone knows something.”
Locally, the Greater Sudbury Missing Persons Facebook page was founded in 2014 by Pickering, who was trying to locate her own daughter. Thankfully, her daughter was found. Now, Pickering maintains the page as a resource for other Sudbury parents and family members who are also searching for a missing loved one.
Pickering said Greater Sudbury Missing Persons has assisted in finding 200 or more missing people.
