“Hold the line!” the call echoes through the forest. “This is not a race! OK, straighten your line.”
The directions are being issued by a short woman with a big smile and a big voice. Her name is Michelle Hamilton-Matthews and she is using her 20-some years of search and rescue experience to teach the basics of grid searching.
The directions are being issued to a group of some 18 volunteers, who are spending this rainy Saturday morning in the thick bush of a property off Nepewassi Lake Road in Markstay.
They are here upon the invitation of a group called Please Bring Me Home, a grassroots organization that works independently to try to track down missing persons. The group and its work were featured in an episode of the CTV news program W5 in 2019.
The reason Please Bring Me Home is here is because the group is trying to solve the disappearance of Meagan Pilon, a Sudbury teenager who vanished in 2013.
Please Bring Me Home has been gathering tips and information on Meagan’s disappearance since 2019. Often with the aid of retired law enforcement officials and other experts in the field, Please Bring Me Home conducts its own investigations and has succeeded in bringing closure to a number of families.
Back in February, Please Bring Me Home investigator Linda Gillis, a retired RCMP inspector, told Sudbury.com the information gathered gave the group every indication that Meagan, who was just 15 when she disappeared from Sudbury, was the victim of a homicide.
Which brings us to August, 2020. Nick Oldrieve, executive director of Please Bring Me Home, said the group’s investigation has identified four properties in the Sudbury and Espanola areas that may be linked to Meagan’s disappearance, and multiple “areas of interest” on each property that could contain clues or, sadly, possibly the remains of the girl.
But searchers are needed to comb those sites. Oldrieve said because Please Bring Me Home is grassroots and not affiliated with police, the Ontario Search and Rescue Volunteer Association (OSARVA), the governing body for volunteer search and rescue teams in Ontario, can’t be brought in to conduct the necessary searches on the properties. OSARVA requires a formal request from law enforcement to get involved.
So, Please Bring Me Home is training its own team of searchers, which is why a group of volunteers is tromping through the bush near Markstay on a rainy Saturday.
Michelle Hamilton-Matthews is one of the people doing the training. She has some 20 years of search and rescue experience and volunteered . Also volunteering to help train the searchers is Bill Noone, who retired with nearly 30 years of search and rescue experience.
Hamilton-Matthews said she saw the call-out on social media that experienced searchers were needed to help train volunteers and she “just wanted to help out.”
Noone agreed. For him and for Hamilton-Matthews, Noone said the effort is about bringing closure to the Meagan’s loved ones, who just want answers, good or bad.
Two of those family members were on hand to take part in the training. Meagan’s aunts, Carole Martel and Ellen Pilon-Mooney, said the family just wants closure.
“We probably won’t find out what happened to her, but we hope to find her,” Martel said. “I don’t really care what happened now — I just want to find her, at least we deserve that.”
Sudbury.com will continue to follow this story.
A Facebook group, Help us find Meagan Pilon, was created to help find her. The group has almost 1,100 members, and the administrators keep the public up to date on what's happening with the case.
Another Facebook group, Greater Sudbury Missing Persons, is also looking into Meagan's disappearance. The group has more than 1,400 members.
Meagan was last seen on Sept. 12, 2013, possibly at her family home.
Meagan is described as standing 5-10 and weighing 140 lbs at the time of her disappearance, with black hair and hazel eyes. She has a small scar on her upper lip, and a red birthmark in the left inner chest area. Meagan also has a playboy bunny tattoo on her left shoulder blade.
If you have any information on Meagan Pilon’s disappearance (or the information on any other missing person), you can call Please Bring Me Home’s anonymous tipline at 1-226-702-2728.
You can also contact the Criminal Investigations Division of the Greater Sudbury Police (705) 675-9171 ext 6632 or Crime Stoppers (705) 675-TIPS (8477) or 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).
