A Wausau woman who was 16 when she disappeared more than nine years ago is alive and living outside the U.S., and volunteers at an Athens church are determined to raise the funds necessary to bring the woman home.
Connie McCallister, now 26, disappeared with her boyfriend Aug. 15, 2004, when she was an honor-roll student at Athens High School, where she also was involved in track and cross country and worked at a bakery.
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The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children displayed McCallister’s name and photo on its website until three months ago. That’s when a church missionary who met McCallister and learned she was a missing person contacted officials at the national organization and said McCallister, who now has three young children, was safe and wanted to come home.
“We have confirmed, through conversations on Skype, that this is really Connie, and she did ask for help in getting home,” said Wausau Police Capt. Greg Hagenbucher. “But she won’t come back without her children.”
When they learned of McCallister’s plight, volunteers and employees at Trinity Lutheran Church in Athens, where McCallister attended vacation Bible school, acted quickly to help the McCallister family. Church officials will host a soup dinner Nov. 17 to raise the funds necessary to bring the once-missing woman and her children back to the U.S.
Judy Weise, who works at Trinity and is spearheading the fundraising effort, said the family is reluctant to divulge the details of McCallister’s disappearance and her whereabouts during the past nine years until McCallister is safely back in the country.
“We don’t want to do anything to jeopardize Connie’s safety, and we believe we could be putting her in danger if we say more,” Weise said. “We just want to get her home.”
Officials with the U.S. Consulate are working with McCallister to gather the required documents and identification records necessary for McCallister to return home, said Wausau Police Detective Kay Hansen, who has worked on the case since detectives in Wausau received word McCallister is alive.
The McCallisters had just moved from Athens to Wausau when Connie McCallister went missing with her boyfriend, a then-22-year-old man who is wanted on charges of first-degree sexual assault involving an unrelated victim.
McCallister’s mother, Cindy McCallister, now lives in Florida, but several of Connie McCallister’s family members remain in the Wausau area, Weise said.
