After they walked to the store and back home, Lloyd Reese set his 7-year-old sister on the back of the car and gave her half a Snickers bar.

"He said, 'I love you and I'll be back,' " said his sister Thunder Buist, now 31. "We never heard from him again."

Reese, 14, and 21-year-old David Jaramillo went missing nearly 25 years ago after going to East Canyon Reservoir to go boating and play with two other friends. On Friday, Salt Lake City police publicly re-opened the cold case.

The group left Reese's home at 173 E. 1700 South the afternoon of June 3, 1985, for the reservoir, located northeast of the city. At some point during the day, Reese and Jaramillo became separated from the rest of the group, said police Sgt. Robin Snyder. In the era before cell phones, their friends had nothing to do but take the car and come back to the city. When Reese and Jaramillo didn't return, each of their families called police.

But nothing has ever come of the case, even after the lake was dredged and another of Buist's brothers hired a private detective. Police don't know if their disappearances were the result of an accident or some kind of foul play. "Anything is possible," Snyder said.

Detectives are asking anyone who has memories of that day -- or were in the group they hung out with, often at the Reese house -- to call police at 801-799-3000.

For their two families, the young men's missing places are like open wounds.

"Over the years, I see someone and do a double-take ... I've stopped people who remind me of him, but it's not him," said Jaramillo's brother, Paul. "We have never stopped looking all these years."

He was 15 when his big brother disappeared. David Jaramillo was about 5-feet-9-inches tall with curly brown hair and one chipped tooth. He was popular with the girls, his brother said, and "a happy guy." He worked with his father at the New Grand Hotel and was studying general arts at Salt Lake Community College.

Reese had just graduated from Glendale Middle School and wanted to be a doctor, said his mother, Marsha Clarke. Around the house, he played "guitar" on a broom to his favorite songs by AC/DC, Ted Nugent and Aerosmith.

The two families met for the first time in front of the Salt Lake City Pioneer Precinct on Friday morning.

"It is so painful," Claudia Jansen, Jaramillo's mother, said as she and Clarke tearfully embraced. She had just placed a grave marker for her missing son in January, trying to find some closure. The case re-opened about a month later.

"I'm just hoping he'll walk through the front door," Marsha Clarke said.

Police have taken DNA from the families to see if it matches any evidence police might find, Snyder said. Detectives re-opened the case after an unusually low number of homicides last year gave them time to work other cases, she said. Many of the witnesses and family members are still in the area and are willing to help.

"It's the smallest piece of information that could bring closure to these families," said Detective Mike Hamideh, who is leading the investigation. "Even strangers who spent time in East Canyon in June of 1985 may know something that seemed like nothing at the time but could be key to their disappearance."

It is the first missing persons cold case the Salt Lake City police have reopened.

Snyder did not release some details, including how the two separated from the group and the type of car they took to the reservoir. Jaramillo's and Reese's two friends, she said, are not considered suspects in their disappearance.

About a week after Reese's disappearance, the 7-year-old Buist realized what her parents were trying to protect her from: Her brother wasn't coming home. She called 911 herself, but the dispatcher told her she was too young to report her brother missing.

"I just hung up and cried and cried," she said. "I just want closure, good or bad. For both families."