Dubhe Coates, mother of Sarah Coates, has not given up in the search for her daughter.
The red-haired, blue-eyed, 30-year-old was last seen by her mother in Calgary, in the southwest neighbourhood of Stanley Park on Aug. 2, 2012. Sarah was reported missing by her mother early December of that year, with news sources picking up the story May 2013. Sarah’s van was found after the flood on Stoney First Nation on Oct. 22, 2013. Sarah has yet to be found.
“It is not time to close this yet. We have to find out what happened to my daughter,” Dubhe Coates pleaded. “My daughter was a nice person, who was kind to people.”
Sarah’s story began when she last spoke to her mother in 2012…
“People thought she was a transient, homeless person (but) people don’t understand when someone is different,” her mother explained. “Sarah had said she just wanted to travel in her van for a while – she couldn’t stand living in the city.”
Sarah had been living in the Radium-Columbia Valley area for a year before her disappearance. Described as a “free-spirit” by those close to her, Sarah was staying in her 1992 blue Chevrolet Astro van with her three cats and a dog. Dubhe explained that her daughter had a chronic illness and Sarah was more comfortable being in the outdoors.
“Sarah was a kid you could not leave unattended for one second. She was very adventurous. She liked to dance and she loved her animals very much,” Dubhe explained.
When Dubhe first did not hear from her daughter, she said it was not out of the ordinary to not hear from Sarah for long periods of time and the mother assumed Sarah had gone to the B.C. music festival Shambhala.
“I didn’t worry at first – I never worried about that child. She is very independent and I never would imagine that anything would happen to her,” Dubhe commented.
The registration for Sarah’s van was due in the middle of October and Dubhe had started to get worried that she hadn’t heard from her daughter. But it wasn’t until December when Dubhe went to visit her daughter’s bank to confirm her fears.
“I got the overwhelming feeling that something terrible had happened to her,” Dubhe choked.
“The bank isn’t supposed to tell you the account balance but I was crying so much and so hysterical that the (teller) told me there was no bank activity since August.”
The mother immediately called the police to report Sarah missing.
“The day I reported her, I knew she was dead,” Dubhe said quietly.
“Sarah would never let anything happen to those animals, and I knew if she wasn’t using her bank account then she wasn’t feeding those animals. So something happened to my daughter.”
It was six months after Dubhe reported her daughter missing when Calgary news outlets picked up on the story, explaining the Calgary Police were pleading with the public to give any information anyone had to help find Sarah.
“We don’t believe it was suspicious – there was nothing to indicate foul play,” said Cochrane RCMP Cpl. Matt Pumphrey about the investigation.
A missing persons report was issued and Dubhe bought a car so she could distribute missing persons posters across southern Alberta and B.C. During the first year of Sarah’s disappearance, her mother commented that she encountered many people that Sarah had also met through her travels.
“I got to meet a lot of people that she met and that was really nice – a lot of very well-meaning people who tried to help,” Dubhe recalled.
It was also during these travels when Dubhe got the unfortunate experience of hearing false reports and rumours.
“One time I was sitting at a (gas station) at Invermere and someone had told that there had been this fire and Sarah had been stabbed and burned to death in this fire … and I was just sitting there eating my eggs and toast and my face just fell,” Dubhe wept.
That report, like many others, turned out to be false.
“People make up these dramatic stories and I don’t know why,” Dubhe said.
It wasn’t until over a year after Dubhe reported her daughter missing that there was an update in the case. After the 2013 flood that hit southern Alberta, Sarah’s van was found in Stoney Nakoda First Nation on Oct. 22 on an isolated road near the Nakoda Lodge. The discovery was thanks to an anonymous tip from a resident from the First Nation.
“The RCMP were wonderful … they had a huge search and then it snowed,” Dubhe said quietly.
The police have done something every summer, including several ground searches, Cpl. Pumphrey explained. RCMP believed Sarah was camping in the area and questioned all the residents of the surrounding area, if they had any information but nothing was brought forward.
“The amount of searching that has gone into that area, all the people that donated their time, and all the hard work, I can just never say thank you enough,” Dubhe exclaimed.
“But we don’t know what happened.”
Cpl. Pumphrey said the case is still an open missing persons case.
“We just don’t know what happened. Every person I have spoken to from Morley has been very kind and understanding but we need to find out what happened. And we need to find her body,” Dubhe wept.
“I don’t know if that is possible, after the flood, but I just don’t really want to give up on that situation just yet. Not today.”
Sarah is still listed as a missing person, although her case file cannot be found on the website, due to the change from a provincial database to a national one. The queue just needs to be updated to include Sarah’s information, Pumphrey explained.
“We get the odd Crime Stopper tip but none of them have been creditable so far – we talk to people quite often but we are still awaiting any new information,” Pumphrey said. “We believe she died out there, but we don’t know where.”
Dubhe said she had always planned to go to Shambhala with her daughter. And Sarah’s long-term goals were to save up enough money to buy a motor home so she could travel across Canada with her animals.
“Sarah was just a different kind of person – not a crazy, homeless, transient. Just different,” her mother explained. “She made the best of her life, which wasn’t very good with a disability but she still made the best of it.”
Anyone with information about the van or the disappearance is asked to call Cochrane RCMP detachment at 403-851-8000 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
“There are so many tragedies out in Morley and now my daughter is just another one, and we should try make it the last one,” Dubhe reflected.
“So I just hope we find someone that can come forward (with information) because Sarah was a nice girl. She liked to dance and she was very loved.”
