CAMERON - For 88 days, the people of Barron County prayed that Jayme Closs would be found.
On Sunday night, the community turned to church for a different sort of prayer — one expressing gratitude for the 13-year-old's safe return home.
Family, friends and neighbors gathered at St. Peter Catholic Church in Cameron for a prayer service to honor Jayme, who freed herself from the northern Wisconsin home of Jake Thomas Patterson on Jan. 10 after nearly three months in captivity. Patterson is charged with shooting and killing Jayme's parents, James and Denise Closs, on Oct. 15, abducting her and holding her in his Town of Gordon home.
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Last week, Jayme Closs was joyously reunited with her family, but many other families in Wisconsin are still hoping their missing children will come home.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) maintains a database of missing kids. There are currently about 50 children from Wisconsin who have been reported missing. Some of the kids have been missing for just weeks, some of them, years.
"What happens with a story like this, children naturally start asking who else is missing. Are there other children out there with this situation,” said Angeline Hartmann, director of media for the NCMEC. “Sadly, I can tell you right now, there is a child who is being held against their will in a similar situation."
The organization works to bring awareness to every missing child, even though some cases (like Jayme Closs’) get more attention from the media.
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BARRON - The choir softly sang its refrain, "I Believe," as a Christmas tree glowed in the darkness.
Such was the mood of a tree-lighting ceremony at Riverview Middle School in Barron Wednesday to honor 13-year-old Jayme Closs. The missing teen’s family and residents gathered together in the cold, bringing light to their community and showing hope is still alive.
Jayme disappeared on Oct. 15, the night her parents, James and Denise, were found shot to death in their home outside Barron. Authorities have ruled the deaths homicides, and Jayme is considered endangered.
Wednesday’s Tree of Hope ceremony was organized by the Barron School District and Jennie-O Turkey Store and Hormel Foods, where James, 56, and Denise, 46, worked for 27 years. Jayme is a student at the middle school.
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Also:
Wis. Crime Lab Is Ground Zero In Search For Break In Closs Case
The family of 13-year-old Jayme Closs, abducted from her Barron home last month, is asking for prayers, said Patty Gerber, parish director for the Closs family’s parish cluster of St. Peter, Cameron; St. Boniface, Chetek; Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Strickland; and St. Joseph, Barron.
“They believe in the power of prayer, and that’s all that they request,” Gerber added.
The eighth-grader, who is in the religious education program, was kidnapped after her parents were shot to death by unknown people at their home.
Gerber said the students in Closs’ class talk about her every week and pray together for her return.
The Diocese of Superior held an hour for prayer on Jayme’s behalf Sunday, Oct. 28.
Superior Catholic Herald
St Patrick, pray for us!
