In the hopes of ending a five-year-mystery, Sunshine Coast RCMP are appealing to the public to come forward with any information on the disappearance of Rhody Lake.
The 80-year-old mother of three and grandmother of five went missing on Nov. 27, 2005, while presumably on a walk into town from her Sandy Hook home.
While dozens of searches of the area were done, tips were followed up and a private investigator was hired, no clue to her disappearance was ever found.
The family has been distraught and seeking some sort of answer for years now, looking into reports of remains found and conducting searches themselves. Next weekend will mark the five-year anniversary of the disappearance.
In honour of the sad date, Lake's daughter Jennifer Tipper-Lake wanted to reopen the case and put out a plea to the public for any new information, no matter how small, that may lead to a breakthrough. It seems the local RCMP detachment had the same idea.
"I contacted the RCMP in the spring, and I was passed on to a new officer, Cathleen Falebrinza, who is now working on the case," Tipper-Lake said. "She said she was just talking about me, and they were just about to start reinvestigating the case. That is really great news for me, because it was just something I was going to see if I could do on my own. So that phone call started the whole collaboration of doing a story and getting the story out to the public on a larger scale."
In order to reach more people who might have information, Sunshine Coast RCMP will be filming a video about the case next week that will include an interview with Lake's family. That video will then be placed on the RCMP news website in the hopes other media outlets will pick up the story.
There will also be a short re-enactment of Lake's last known interaction with someone at Porpoise Bay Provincial Park filmed for a Crime Stoppers video to air on Coast Cable in the coming weeks.
Tipper-Lake is hopeful the videos and publicity will help reach that one person who has that tidbit of information needed to solve the case.
"I have a sense that somebody out there knows something," she said.
Lake may have been wearing a blue and yellow vest, brown cords, brown hiking boots and an orange and red or beige toque when she went missing. She was last seen talking with an elderly man at Porpoise Bay Provincial Park at about 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 27, 2005.
If you have information regarding this case, you are asked to call RCMP at 604-885-2266 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
