The Christmas lights on his mother’s tree will be lit again this year for Steven Koecher, a symbolic gesture for a family who still hopes for news of the missing man.
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About Steven Koecher
Koecher was last seen Dec. 13, 2009, in Henderson, Nev. He had been living in St. George. He is 5-foot-11 with an average build and has blond hair and blue eyes.
Anyone with information can contact St. George police at 435-627-4300 or Henderson police at 702-267-5000.
A tree-lighting ceremony commemorating the second anniversary of his disappearance will be 7 p.m. Tuesday, at 334 W. 3100 South, Bountiful.
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Learn more about the missing
The Utah Department of Public Safety maintains a “Utah’s Missing Persons” list at http://1.usa.gov/fsf3R.
Lets Bring Them Home tracks missing adults in the country. It lists 11 Utah adults missing under suspicious circumstances at lbth.org.
The list does not include missing West Valley City resident Susan Powell. It does list St. George resident Steven Koecher as missing out of Henderson, Nev.
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On Dec. 13, 2009, Steven walked away from his car in an upscale Henderson, Nev., neighborhood and seemingly vanished into thin air.
To mark the anniversary, family members will gather Tuesday at the Bountiful home of Steven’s mother to light the tree he decorated just before he moved to St. George, seeking to escape the northern Utah winters.
"There is absolutely nothing new to help us know where our son is," said his mother, Deanne Koecher, who this year lost her husband, Rolf Koecher, and her father. "Every time I look at a picture of the family, I realize three important men in my life are gone."
Memories of her son, who was 30 when he disappeared, are summoned these days by something as simple as hearing a guitar, which Steven "was getting quite good at," and any reference to Brazil.
"That is where he went on his mission," said Deanne Koecher. "His father went on a mission there, too."
She has no idea why her son was in Henderson, where surveillance video on a private residence captured the last known image of him walking away from a car filled with wrapped Christmas gifts. Theories that he became involved in something unexpected are "all conjecture," his mother said. "But I can’t imagine he is voluntarily staying away from us."
After Steven disappeared, a network of relatives descended on Henderson and the Las Vegas area to look for him, posting fliers and canvassing restaurants, hospitals, jails and even the morgue, to no avail.
A large search of a rocky vacant lot in south Las Vegas by about 70 volunteers also turned up nothing.
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