Inside the 30-Year Search for Abducted News Anchor Jodi Huisentruit

“Jodi lived her life as an optimist,” her family said in a statement marking the tragic date, per FindJodi, “and she had a great passion for living life to the fullest. She was a bright light who made the world around her better just by being in it. Her kindness and heart were unmatched, and she had an innate ability to make those she met feel seen, heard, and valued. She had such a bright future ahead of her, and she should be here now living out her dreams.”

The family also expressed disbelief she’d been gone for so long, noting it had been three decades of “pure anguish and torture dealing with the loss of our Jodi and trying to find answers to what happened to her 30 years ago today.”

But so far, the truth has remained out of reach.

“They use that word closure a lot,”  Merbach, the news director who hired Huisentruit, told Omaha’s WOWT-TV in 2015. “For Jodi’s family, I don’t think there’s any such thing after having a wound fester for 20 years—how do you close that up immediately? Where I work in Mason City now—from my office—I can see the tree that we planted for Jodi. It’s a reminder for me every day of what happened 20 years ago. It’s still very close. It’s still very fresh.”

Also outside the station paying tribute to Huisentruit: A stone marker engraved with a golf ball and a TV camera.

(Originally published Dec. 22, 2018, at 3 a.m. PT)