DESPERATE DAY
Kin hope DNA will find missing loved ones
For Rose Cobo and the others inside the city medical examiner’s office, it was a day of hope and heartache.
The Brooklyn woman, whose daughter Chelsea disappeared May 6, 2016, came looking for good news despite long odds as the grim third anniversary approached. Cobo, who provided the ME with a DNA sample last year in her hunt for the missing 25-yearold, returned Saturday with her optimism tempered by time.
“Today is 1,091 days,” said Cobo, who marked her 55th birthday at the Manhattan location. “I’m like a marionette in a washing machine. But it’s not about me, it’s about her. Is she OK? Is she behind a door? Is she being trafficked? Is she gone?”
The last option is the saddest for the roughly two dozen families who came to provide their own DNA swabs in hopes of finding lost loved ones among the unidentified John and Jane Does logged into a national database, a process that typically takes a few weeks.
“When there is a match, it’s mixed emotions,” said Dr. Carl Gajewksi, head of the ME’s department of forensic biology. “We hope it provides comfort for the family, but we realize the wound is still there … They just want to know.
“It’s the not knowing that’s difficult.”
The ME’s office has identified the bodies of nine missing people since launching the program four years ago — along with a single match between a living person and their relatives, according to Gajewksi.
An undocumented woman who crossed the Mexican border into the U.S. in 2006 provided a DNA sample Saturday in hopes of finding her brother, who disappeared after supposedly reaching San Antonio. She fought back tears in recounting the last time the two were together.
“I couldn’t finish the journey, and my husband told my brother to keep going,” the 38year-old woman recalled. “We never heard a thing from him again. We haven’t gotten a single call or anything. We don’t know if he’s dead or alive.”
The woman, accompanied by her older sister, sought help from officials with the Colibri collected the unidentified remains of more than 1,000 people along the U.S.-Mexico border. She’s cautiously optimistic the swab can supply an answer to her long-unresolved questions about his fate.
“We have hope that with the exam, we will be able to find him,” said the younger sister. “They are giving us hope. I want people to know that all are able to find help.”
The medical examiner and Colibri collaborated two years ago to identify a woman missing for 21 years after one of her kids gave a DNA sample
Cobo tried to remain upbeat as she spoke with members of the NYPD missing persons unit rather than blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. Daughter Chelsea would now be 28, and her then 10month-old daughter is approaching her fourth birthday.
“This is how I spend my birthday, but who knows?” said Cobo. “It could be my best birthday ever, because I’m looking. And it might be the greatest gift ever if I find my daughter.”