It’s the ultimate heartbreak for any parent – your child disappears and you don’t know where she is. Dubhe Coates said not a day goes by where she can’t help but think of her daughter, Sara, who has been missing since 2012.
“The last day I saw her we got together and…we went for a nice walk with the dog and saw a little squirrel,” Coates said. “One day (a couple of weeks later) I was walking from the grocery store – it was a beautiful day – and I was overcome with such sorrow and heartbreak because I thought she must be dead. I just felt that.”
Coates said she has no delusions Sara is still alive – and she prefers that to the possibility her daughter was taken by someone and is being held against her will. Still, she wants to find Sara and bring closure for herself and her family.
According to Coates, Sara was traveling and living in her van with her three cats and one dog when she was reported missing by her family in August 2012. She’d just returned from Radium, B.C., where she’d been living for about a year. Coates said Sara planned to camp in the area around Calgary where her family lived.
Sara’s van – a 1992 blue Chevrolet – was found in Morley in 2013. She was 31 when she disappeared. Her animals have also never been found.
“She was supposed to call me…and I didn’t worry for a while. I was kind of hurt she didn’t call, but I didn’t worry because she was quite competent with her way of traveling,” Coates said.
After experiencing the overwhelming feeling something had happened to Sara, Coates said she called Calgary Police Services (CPS) and reported her daughter missing. The investigation was eventually handed over to Cochrane RCMP after the van was found.
Sara was known to drive around Rocky View County with her animals, a fact Coates said might have made her daughter unpopular with local residents.
“Their perception of what’s going on might not be what’s going on,” she said. “She really liked being in her van and she really liked traveling around. She had to make her life best for herself, not for what other people think is appropriate for her.”
Coates said the impact of Sara’s disappearance on the family has been immense.
“Sara was very dearly loved. We need to know what happened to Sara and we need to find Sara,” she said. “It’s been very stressful. It’s like my son said, it’s like our life kind of stopped in 2012.”
Cochrane RCMP continues the search for Sara, conducting a search of the Morley area June 13 and 14, according to Cochrane RCMP Cpl. Troy Savinkoff. Search and rescue teams from Cochrane, Didsbury, Foothills and Calgary took part in that search – 50 on June 13 and 35 on June 14.
“It was the same area where the van was located, extending it further,” he said.
“We still have members who are actively investigating this file and interviewing people, and continuously coming up with ideas of future searches we can do.”
Savinkoff said, while no additional clues turned up in the recent search in Morley, the detachment will conduct further searches in the future.
Coates said she continues to hope she’ll eventually know what happened to her daughter.
“I just hope we can find my daughter in the next few weeks, which I have a lot of confidence that will happen,” she said.
“Something happened to her. I’m very hopeful the RCMP will find her body or some of her things. People just don’t disappear into thin air.”
Anyone with any information about Coates is asked to call the Cochrane RCMP detachment at 403-851-8000.
