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8115 Market St. Ste 204
Just minutes from Wrightsville Beach
(910) 686-1869
www.GrowingGrins.com
42
WBM march 2011
She was ready for a change. Prior
to her arrest, during a visit to her
mother, who’d remarried and relocated
to North Carolina, she met Sam
Caison (who would go on to become
a successful fencing contractor). Once
out of jail, she entered counseling,
married Sam and launched herself into
the process of turning her life around.
Motherhood and community work
characterized the next five years, as
she had four children and volunteered
for everything from the PTA to local
charities. In her spare time, she played
drums in an all-girl rock band.
A series of health issues sidelined
her in the early 1990s, but, by 1994,
she was ready and anxious to continue
her work. While scouting for a
cause for which she might sponsor a
fundraiser, she came across the North
Carolina Center for Missing Persons
and an ex-cop named John Goad.
Goad put her in touch with Karen
Brown here in Wilmington, who was
running a group that worked to publicize
missing persons cases. Caison
helped Brown organize a carnival for
the group at a local shopping mall,
erected a memorial wall to the missing
and got the cast of Matlock, filming in
the area, to pose for the press in front
of the shrine.
Caison had found her cause. When
Brown moved out of the state and
suggested that she take over as director
of the local organization, Caison
took the idea a step further. Instead
of just publicizing missing people, she
wanted to create an organization that
would actually set about finding them.
Brown handed The CUE Center for
Missing Persons’ its first donation
check — for $76.
Later this month, March 24-27,
the CUE Center will hold its annual
Round Table Conference at the
Holiday Inn Conference Center on
Market Street. It will, as it has done
for the past seven years, bring together
a variety of law enforcement and civilian
professionals in the field of missing
persons and related issues, like domestic
violence. Each year, this conference
increases the number of educational