The Comox Valley's Only Locally Owned Newspaper

WITHOUT A TRACE

Five years ago this weekend, a Valley teen just disappeared

By Debra Martin

Echo Staff

Lindsey Nicholls walked out onto the Royston-Cumberland Road five years ago this weekend. And vanished without a trace.

The 14-year-old blond, green-eyed teen had had a rough year since her family had moved to the Comox Valley the previous fall from the lower mainland. She missed her old friends. She'd run away from home once earlier in the spring. She'd been assaulted at school. She was living temporarily in a foster home.

Through all this adolescent angst, she was still dearly loved by her family. When she had run away from home in the spring, she'd left her mother a lengthy note. She said where she'd be staying. She took her favourite possessions and clothing.

But on that holiday Monday, Aug. 2, 1993, Lindsey, who had only been back in the Valley for a week or so after her runaway episode to the lower mainland, gave no indication that she was running away again. She told the foster home parents that she was planning to go into town. She might have been planning to head up to Comox for the Nautical Days celebration. Wearing a blue plaid top, jeans and sneakers, the slim 5'3" teen, just shy of her 15th birthday, headed down the rural road without even a jacket. She was known to hitch-hike at times. Nobody has heard from her since.

But someone, somewhere, might have the clue, the tiny detail or seemingly insignificant recollection, that could help police and Lindsey's family solve the heart-breaking mystery.

That's why Lindsey's mom, Judy Peterson, is making numerous media appeals and appearances this weekend, painful as that is, on the fifth anniversary of her daughter's disappearance. "You can't get any media unless there's some sort of anniversary," she says sadly from her home in Victoria.