Jason Jolkowski

At about 10:45 on the morning of Wednesday, June 13, 2001, a neighbor in Omaha, Nebraska, looked out and saw nineteen-year-old Jason Jolkowski in front of his family’s house, helping his younger brother pull the trash cans back up from the curb.

It was an ordinary summer morning. Jason was getting ready for work. He had been called in early to his job at a restaurant, and his car was in the shop, so he’d arranged for a co-worker to pick him up at his old high school, about half a mile from his house. He was going to walk there.

He never arrived.

The neighbor who saw him with the trash cans that morning was the last person known to have seen Jason Jolkowski.

Jason

Jason Anthony Jolkowski was born in 1981 in Grand Island, Nebraska. He lived in Omaha with his family: his father, Jim, his mother, Kelly, and his younger brother, Michael. He had graduated from Benson High School the year before. He worked at a Fazoli’s restaurant and was studying radio broadcasting part-time at a community college across the river in Council Bluffs, Iowa. He hoped to work in radio someday.

His family described him as a quiet, gentle, responsible young man. He was close to his parents. He had no history of running away. He had no problems with drugs or alcohol that anyone knew of. He had plans: school, work, a future.

The Walk

On the morning of June 13, Jason’s manager at Fazoli’s called him and asked him to come in earlier than his scheduled shift. His car was being repaired, and the restaurant was more than four miles away. So Jason called a co-worker, who agreed to pick him up at Benson High School, a short walk from the family’s home.

At 10:45 a.m., the neighbor saw Jason with his brother and the trash cans. Then, presumably, Jason went back inside to get ready.

Sometime between about 11:15 and 11:30, the co-worker called the house. Jason hadn’t shown up at the school. The co-worker had waited, then left.

Jason never made it to work. He never came home.

Nothing

When Jason’s parents came home that evening and learned he was missing, they were immediately alarmed. They called the police. But because Jason was nineteen — an adult — police at first suggested that he had probably left on his own, and would turn up.

His parents knew that wasn’t true. Jason had taken nothing with him, as far as they could tell. He had no money to speak of. He had left everything behind.

Security cameras at Benson High School were checked. They showed no sign of Jason arriving at the school that morning.

Somewhere along the half-mile walk from his house to the school, in the middle of a residential neighborhood in broad daylight, Jason Jolkowski disappeared.

Or perhaps he never left the house at all. Some have wondered whether he was still inside, or in the garage, when someone came to the door. There’s no evidence either way.

Project Jason

Jason’s mother, Kelly Jolkowski, was devastated. But out of her grief, she built something remarkable.

She learned how difficult it was for families of missing adults to get help. There were few resources, little public attention, and no central place for information about missing people. So she and her husband founded an organization called Project Jason, to support families of the missing and help them find resources, publicity and emotional support.

Project Jason went on to help a great many families of missing people across the country. It organized support retreats for families, helped publicize cases, and raised awareness of the problem of missing adults.

Jason’s Law

The Jolkowskis also lobbied the Nebraska state legislature to improve the way the state handled missing persons cases. In 2005, the legislature passed a law known as Jason’s Law, which created a statewide clearinghouse and database of missing persons, making it easier for law enforcement agencies across Nebraska to share information about missing people, adults as well as children.

The Question

More than two decades later, the question remains: what happened to Jason Jolkowski on that sunny June morning?

Did he leave the house and meet someone along the way? Did someone offer him a ride? Did he change his plans, for some reason no one knew? Did someone come to the house?

His family has never stopped looking for the answer. They have said they want only to know what happened, and to bring him home.