The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts.
All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages.
Listener discretion is advised.
I'm your host, Ali McLaughlin-Sulkowski.
And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski.
And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases.
And missing person cases.
Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm Ali.
And I'm Eli.
We are on episode 85.
Episode 85 this week.
I believe this is a missing person case, right?
Yes, it is.
And I just want to kind of mention this at the beginning that this may be kind of a shorter
podcast as there wasn't as much information about this case as I normally like to bring
to the podcast.
But it felt really important that we talk about this case and kind of get into it.
All right.
I think on that note, we should just jump right in.
Let's do it.
Today, we are covering the missing person case of Elyssa Vasquez.
And this takes place in January of 2003 in Clarkston, Georgia.
But first, a little bit about Elyssa.
Elyssa, she also went by Lisa and Lili.
She's 12 years old in 2003.
She would be 34 years old today.
Elyssa's mother, Sharon, shared that her daughter had been diagnosed with ADHD.
Elyssa had had troubles at her last school who were not equipped to handle her learning
differences.
But Sharon was cautiously optimistic that a new school that Elyssa was enrolled in,
Clarkston, Georgia, would be able to understand what she needed and create academic goals
for her, something that she was working at home on too.
Elyssa was a ham from a young age.
Her mother, Sharon, says, quote, she loved making people laugh and was very goofy and
fun.
She loved to dance and learn about music, end quote.
Even though it was still a little more than a month away, Elyssa was planning her 13th
birthday party.
She wanted to have a dance party.
Elyssa was an energetic young woman with a big, wide grin.
In 2003, she was 5'1", 117 pounds with dark hair and hazel eyes.
And now a timeline of events.
On Thursday, January 29, 2003, this is Elyssa’s first day at her new school.
Not only was she nervous about starting a new school year, but she also needed to navigate
her way to her new school using the public transit system.
Sharon, at this time, was on bed rest and Elyssa’s father was unable to drive her
to school that morning.
Her mother, Sharon, says, quote, at first I was worried and scared because I had to
send her on a bus.
Not a school bus, it was a public MARTA bus, end quote.
And the MARTA bus system is the Atlantic public transit system.
So Elyssa headed off to school.
The MARTA bus stop was not too far from her home and it would drop her off right in front
of her school.
She was wearing a blue ski jacket with a white stripe down the center, blue jeans, and white
sneakers.
Throughout the morning, Sharon had a bad feeling and kept finding her mind wandering back to
Elyssa.
But when Elyssa called her mom at lunch, Sharon started to relax.
Sharon says, quote, she called me during lunch to tell me how happy she was at her new school.
Everything was fine.
She was excited.
She even asked me if I could style her hair like the other girls when she returned home,
end quote.
She wanted her hair braided like Alicia Keys.
At the end of the school day, according to investigators, a security guard from the school
confirmed that Elyssa and other students got on the MARTA bus that afternoon.
Elyssa's father and brother went to meet her at the bus stop to walk her home and hear
about her first day.
However, Elyssa never got off of the bus.
And no one riding the bus could remember Elyssa getting off the bus at any point.
It's as if she vanished into thin air.
Elyssa’s family called the police, who almost immediately classify her as a runaway.
It's hard for me to say what was and wasn't done in regards to Elyssa’s disappearance.
I could not locate any newspaper articles or local news reports mentioning her at the
time.
It's unclear if police ever launched an official search for her or if it was just her family
trying to do it on their own.
Based off of everything, I do think it really was just her family looking for her.
It's easy for me to think about this young woman of color in the South and that her case
would be ignored by police.
And I'm not saying that isn't playing a role here.
But I wanted to talk about how unique of a community Clarkston, Georgia is.
Clarkston, Georgia boasts that they are the Ellis Island of the South.
Starting in the 1990s, Clarkston was identified as an ideal place to resettle newcomers.
It was close enough to Atlanta to still use the public transportation system, but far
enough away that rental prices were reasonable.
According to the town's website, today, half of the city's residents are foreign-born
with over 60 countries represented.
So while Elyssa and her family were new to the school system, it seems as if the city
was set up to help out and accommodate folks that are new.
However, looking through the Clarkston, Georgia police Facebook, none of the comments have
anything nice to say.
And I know that it's Facebook and that it's social media and anyone can post anything.
But they also have never posted about Elyssa’s case either on their Facebook, which is something
that we do see quite often with police departments.
Kind of getting back to the timeline now.
Elyssa’s story will drop from the media altogether and her case will go cold.
The only updates I could find come from her family on Facebook asking for others to come
forward if they know anything and to continuously pray for her.
That is until 2023.
In 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children released an age-progressed
photo and did an interview with Elyssa’s mother, Sharon, which is where a lot of the
details about her case come from.
Elyssa’s family has never given up hope that one day they will be reunited with her
and they have vowed to not stop searching until they find answers as to what happened
to their beloved.
The family begs, quote, if anyone knows anything, no matter how small, please call.
Living with no answers is the worst thing to live with.
Our family is big on love and we just love and miss her, end quote.
Her case is no longer classified as a runaway, but rather an endangered missing child, which
is what it should have been all along in my opinion.
So with that, if you know anything about the disappearance of Elyssa Vasquez in January
of 2003 or her whereabouts today, please call the DeKalb County Police at 404-294-2519.
And the sources for the timeline today come from the National Center for Missing and Exploited
Children, People.com, the family's Facebook page for Elyssa, and the City of Clarkston
government website.
So that is the case of Elyssa Vasquez.
This one was difficult to listen to.
I think cold cases and missing person cases involving children are always, at least for
me, more difficult to engage with just because of, I mean, they're kids, you know, and I
just, I have so many questions, you know.
My initial thought when I was hearing about you describe her personality, especially the,
she was a ham, it reminded me of, well, our nieces and nephews, you know, and I don't
know, her spirit, it sounds so bright and very quickly it felt like it was just extinguished
with what happened.
Not that we know what happened, but extinguished in that she, you know, she seemed to disappear
into thin air, I think is what you said.
So yeah, I, my heart also really goes out to her mother and probably, and her dad.
My heart really goes out to her parents.
I'm sure that they have a lot of feelings about that day.
Yeah, I'm interested in knowing if there were cameras on the bus and just more, if there
were any specifics of the accounts of her, you know, getting out and off the bus, both
to and from school and where she had called from.
Yeah, I just, I have kind of a list of questions, so if you want to, we can just get into it.
Yeah, her case was really shocking to me.
That was kind of the first reaction I had where I was kind of just shocked by the lack
of information for this very young girl who went missing.
What doesn't feel like too long ago, 2003, I know it's been over 20 years now, but to
me that still feels very recent.
But one of the first questions I had, kind of the same as you, was did that bus have
cameras?
So, in 2003, I'm trying to think back, like, it feels like my school buses kind of had
like some camera system in them.
So I don't think it is out of the question to think that there would have been cameras
on that bus.
And then that kind of just brings me back to the first question of what was actually
done in this investigation?
What did police do for her and for her family to try to help bring her home?
I mean, there was a severe lapse in judgment in the decision to make her a runaway.
Make it like that.
Yeah, when you said that, I was just like, God damn it.
She was so excited to be going.
Years before, she had spoken to her mother about how she was excited to be there.
You know?
Like it just doesn't, that decision doesn't make any sense to me.
I feel like from there, choosing to label it as that, didn't, you know, light a fire
under their asses to look for her.
Unless I'm mistaken.
That's the thing.
I don't really know if you are.
I could find no newspaper articles, no local news covering her case at all.
And that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Maybe it's just not available on the internet.
Maybe it's, you know, in a physical archive as opposed to a digital archive.
But I would be very curious to know what got the police to a runaway because I think technically
speaking to label a child as a runaway, that there has to be some indication that they
left on their own accord.
So I think that's kind of a loose definition of runaway jurisdiction, state to state, jurisdiction
to jurisdiction.
But as we've seen on this podcast, sometimes that information isn't there and children
are still labeled as a runaway, even though there is no indication that they left on their
own accord or wanted to leave or anything.
And that feels like what happened here is that there really was nothing that we know
of or that her mother seems to know of that would indicate that Elyssa was planning to
run away, planning to not come home.
Like you said, she called her mom.
She was excited about the new school that she had just started that day.
And she was excited to come home and like do her hair to show up to school the next
day.
You know, like that seems to have been her intention for that day.
I also just wonder about her getting on the bus to begin with.
That does seem to be like kind of the one witness we have in this case is that a security
guard saw her and other students get on the bus.
But because she was so new, I think that can kind of work in two ways.
One, she's new to the school, so she would very much stand out in someone's mind as,
you know, a new girl waiting for the bus.
Like, oh, yes, that is a new student.
That is remarkable.
Or I think that could work against her where nobody really knows what she looks like.
And if police just gave a description to somebody, it's like, oh, yeah, I saw a girl like that
get on the bus.
But maybe it wasn't Elyssa.
Maybe it was somebody else.
So again, that brings me back to the cameras.
Can we ever confirm that she was on the bus to begin with?
Just lots of questions.
But I have to assume that she did make it to school that day.
I would think that would come up before now if she hadn't.
We do know that she called her mom, and from that phone call, it sounded like she was at
school.
So with everything we know, I think she made it to school that day.
But I don't know if she ever made it on the bus for sure.
There doesn't seem to be anything really strong putting her on the bus besides a witness statement,
which we do know that eyewitnesses can be unreliable.
So again, I'd love to see a security camera from the school or from the public bus.
I have to think it existed, and police were maybe just slow on asking for it, and the
tape got erased.
I don't know that for sure.
That's all speculation.
But you can't help but speculate when there's so little in this case.
Yeah.
There's lots of various rabbit holes you can go down and conclusions you can draw when
your mind is left to its own devices.
And we don't have to get into the specifics of this, but my…
I graduated high school in the early aughts.
My school buses definitely did not have cameras on them.
It wasn't until I moved to a bigger city later than the early 2000s and learned that
city buses had cameras on them.
So I will say that I guess it's possible that there weren't cameras at that time.
I do think that that could be a possibility.
I guess I'm hopeful that because it was the public transit as opposed to the school
buses that they would have the camera system on there.
But again, maybe Atlanta wasn't running the most up-to-date buses on the route.
So maybe some buses did have cameras and maybe this specific route just didn't have it
or this specific bus on that day.
Maybe it does exist and we have no idea.
But it's really frustrating to think that there could have been a lot of evidence there
and a lot of clues as to what happened to Elyssa that maybe we're just lost due to
carelessness or not doing due diligence on the part of the police.
Yeah, the fact that it is a city bus that's timed and follows a specific route, there's
a possibility for a moment in time for a lot of eyes, i.e. a lot of witnesses to be on
her during that time.
The possibility of getting interviews or witness statements from possible passengers, you know,
like maybe that work was done and we just don't know.
But again, like I'd love to just know, I'd love to see any sort of movement in this case.
I think bringing it up here today, even though in the beginning, you know, it felt like we
had a lack of information.
And us having this conversation will hopefully spark more conversations about her and get
this family some answers.
Absolutely.
And the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, they did release an age progress
photo last year.
So we'll be putting that on our Instagram so that way folks can see it and see potentially
what she could look like today.
We'll be posting a lot of pictures of Elyssa as well.
Her family has put a lot of pictures out there.
So hopefully somebody recognizes her, it jogs a memory.
You know, maybe some of the kids she met that day at school have stories or have information
that they can bring forward.
Anything, just any piece of information could really help this family and help bring Elyssa
home.
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, those kids, even though they met her that one day, those are a lot of kids that
are in, you know, like their 30s now.
So those people, hopefully a lot of them are around and alive and well and like might remember
something from that day that sticks out to them.
Let's hope that, you know, this sparks some movement in Elyssa’s case.
Again, if you know anything about the disappearance of Elyssa in January of 2003, please call
the DeKalb County Police at 404-294-2519.
And again, we will be putting that age progress photo as well as photos from Elyssa when she
was 12 years old, the time she went missing.
We'll be putting that on our Instagram so that way you can see it, you can share it
in your communities and we just get Elyssa's case out there and get more people talking
about her and more people kind of demanding to know what happened to her.
Just that pressure alone can like open up a case and police can begin investigating again.
So this is the work.
We're all doing it here together.
So thank you for being here.
Thank you for following us on Instagram.
If you're not doing that, join us over there.
We have great conversations in the comments.
Thank you to all who have been commenting.
It's so nice to see familiar faces start to pop up week after week.
Like that's really cool.
We're so happy you're here.
If you could take a minute and just rate and review us on your podcast app.
Again, that's super helpful for people to find this story and this podcast.
So again, that's doing the work that's advocating.
If you or someone you love is hard of hearing, you can find transcripts to all of our podcasts
at coldandmissing.com.
You'll find a backlog of all our other episodes and there's transcripts for all of them.
So head over there.
But that is all I have for this week.
Thank you so much for listening to Cold and Missing.
I'm your host, Allie.
And I'm your co-host, Eli.
Have a good week and stay safe, y'all.
Stay safe, y'all.