Nevada

‘I just hope she’s in a safe place’: More than 40 children missing in Nevada

Published

2 years ago

May 25, 2024

‘I just hope she’s in a safe place’: More than 40 children missing in Nevada

More than two years ago, Bobby Penn dropped his daughter Keira off at school. But when he returned to pick her up, Keira never showed up.

Keira has been missing ever since. She was one of more than 40 children still missing in Nevada on Saturday as the country recognized National Missing Children’s Day, according to both Nevada Child Seekers and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

The day serves as a reminder of every missing child throughout the nation, as well as the precautions parents can take to protect their children.

For parents like Penn, it is an opportunity to continue to raise awareness for his missing daughter and share a crucial message with parents: “communicate with your children.”

’I just hope she’s in a safe place’

“It started with the divorce,” Penn said. He and his ex-wife had a “contentious” divorce, and he feels that Keira and her brother got caught in the middle. It culminated in Keira’s mother losing custody, he said.

When Keira and her brother moved in with Penn, he thought the family had finally found a “new normal.”

Penn said Keira was a diligent student in school and an avid gymnast.

But on Jan. 24, 2022, Keira left school during the day and hasn’t been seen since.

“It’s been difficult dealing with that,” Penn said. “I just hope she’s in a safe place.”

‘As of right now, it’s just frustrating’

Over the past couple of years, Penn said the flow of information coming in from police has slowed.

He said that police have exhausted a series of leads. A subpoenaed phone record shows Keira was communicating with a number that Penn said belonged to his ex wife’s boyfriend on the day of her disappearance. But after that, Keira went “completely off the grid.”

He said police have searched his ex wife’s house, but Keira was not there.

He’s worried about his daughter’s quality of life. “Is she going to school?” he wondered. “It’s kind of like she’s living on the run. What kind of life is that?”

‘Unimaginable circumstances’

John Piet, Nevada children’s advocate, said that the frustration parents feel speaks to the challenging nature of law enforcement work. In this statutory role, he prosecutes cases dealing with missing or exploited children.

“They are unimaginable circumstances,” he said. “They want, and rightfully so desire, a return of their children as quickly as possible. And sometimes, that doesn’t happen.”

While he believes this issue is something most parents don’t even want to think about, he said preparation is critical. Piet recommends parents download a mobile app created by the FBI called “FBI Child ID” that allows parents to input current information and photos of their children.

The app also provides detailed instructions of what to do in the event that a child does go missing. “The first thing you do if your child has gone missing is call 911,” Piet said.

The unsolved cases

Margarita Edwards, executive director of Nevada Child Seekers, said around 96 percent of missing children are eventually found.

Every month, Nevada Child Seekers conducts a Saturday search. Volunteers look for information on “open cases that have gone cold.” All volunteers undergo a background check and training before they take to city streets.

Edwards said the team will gather in an area where a child was last seen missing. Volunteers will then spread out, posting fliers and knocking on neighbors’ doors.

Piet said he understands that the longer these cases go on, the more frustrating it is for parents. “Those cases are just as important as the cases that have recently gone missing,” he said.

Nevada’s missing child problem

In missing child scenarios where there is a confirmed abduction with imminent danger to the child, an AMBER alert will be issued.

According to Adrienne Abbott, chair of Nevada’s Emergency Alert System (EAS), there have been 60 EAS activations for 88 cases of abducted and endangered children since 2001.

Of these, 78 children have been safely recovered, and nine are believed to be alive and in Mexico, she said.

Online dangers

According to Edwards, the summer months are the peak months to lure children. This is because children are online more, possibly while their parents are away at work.

“Predators don’t have to drive around looking for kids anymore,” Edwards said. Instead, they can send them ride-share cars and let them come to them.

Edwards emphasized that a very small number of cases involve abduction by a complete stranger. More than 99 percent of the time, a child will go missing because of someone already in their life, interacting with them on a daily basis.

‘Don’t put it off’

When Keira moved in with Penn, he said that he didn’t have a conversation with her about everything that was going on. “All I ever wanted for her was just to be a kid,” he said. But he regrets not having this difficult talk.

He urged parents to stay involved in their kids’ lives. “Don’t put it off, just do it now,” he said, adding that even if she hadn’t wanted to speak to him, “at least she would have heard it, and maybe she would not have run away.”

Keira is now 17 years old. Penn hopes that one day, perhaps once she turns 18, she will reconnect with her father and brother.

“She has a lot of good that she could do in this world,” Penn said.

Contact Estelle Atkinson at eatkinson@reviewjournal.com.

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Nevada

Best Nevada high schools for athletes? One study has revealed a top 25

Published

5 hours ago

May 15, 2026

Press Room

Best Nevada high schools for athletes? One study has revealed a top 25

Nevada has a rich history of producing athletic legends.

Total number of sports: 24

1. Bishop Gorman (Las Vegas)

Total number of sports: 14

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Nevada

Nevada designates more than 119,000 voters inactive

Published

17 hours ago

May 14, 2026

Press Room

Nevada designates more than 119,000 voters inactive

CARSON CITY, Nev. (KOLO) – The State of Nevada says it has designated more than 119,000 voters as inactive ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar says that in the spring of this year, counties updated 14,164 voter records, designated 119,533 voters as inactive and canceled the voter registrations of 7,583 people.

This is in addition to 2025 voter roll maintenance efforts that registered more than 138,000 voters inactive and canceled nearly 177,000 voter registrations.

“State and local election officials are working hard to prepare voters for the upcoming June Primary, and keeping Nevada’s voter rolls up to date is a critical part of that process. County election officials have dedicated significant resources to make sure Nevada’s voter registration records are accurate, so that all eligible Nevadans – and only eligible Nevadans – can cast a ballot,” said Secretary of State Francisco Aguilar. “Mail ballots are being sent to active, registered voters across the state now. Voters can support their local officials’ work by checking and updating their registration information on VOTE.NV.gov.”

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Nevada

Arbor View beats rival Centennial for 5A boys volleyball state title

Published

1 day ago

May 14, 2026

Press Room

Arbor View beats rival Centennial for 5A boys volleyball state title

The Arbor View boys volleyball team has embodied the mindset that it would take the efforts of all 16 players to win the school its first boys volleyball title.

It proved to be the case on Wednesday night against rival Centennial in the Class 5A state championship match, and the Aggies’ efforts all season showed up in the biggest game of the season.

No. 3-seeded Arbor View claimed its first boys volleyball title with a 25-20, 25-27, 25-19, 25-19 victory over top-seeded Centennial at Sunrise Mountain.

“It feels amazing. The boys have worked hard, I don’t even know if I could put it into words,” Arbor View coach Nicole Adarme said. “Our big goal was to stay calm and collected the entire time. I just wanted to reflect that for them.”

Arbor View (28-13-1) let its emotions out after the final point on an Owen Wenger kill. The Aggies huddled and jumped for joy, helped carry injured teammate Gunnar Robinson off the bench, and eventually moved the celebration into the stands with a sea of red from the Arbor View student section.

“It feels absolutely great,” junior middle blocker/outside hitter Risden Miller said. “We trust each other so much. We’re best friends in and out of volleyball, and that really helps us on the court with just competing as a team.”

Even though the two team’s previous meeting on April 14 was a three-set win in league play by Centennial (32-6), Adarme said she knew the fourth meeting of the season for the two northwest rivals wasn’t going to be a sweep on either side.

Arbor View won a back-and-forth first set on a kill from Miller. Then it looked like the Aggies were going to win a close second set, but Centennial got a point for Arbor View being out of rotation, and the Bulldogs won four of the last five points to even the match score to one set apiece.

“That’s the traditional thing (when we play) Centennial (to play long matches), so for us, we just treated it like another set,” Adarme said. “We knew they were going to fight, so how do we respond to that? Our constant conversation was responding to the negative and moving forward in a positive direction.”

Arbor View scored six straight points in the third set to take a 20-15 lead, and the Aggies never let up to get to the fourth set with a chance to win the title. The Aggies took advantage of several Centennial errors to take the lead in the third set on their way to the title.

“We took three deep breaths and reset and recollected ourselves as a team,” Miller said of closing out the final two sets. “That’s just completely huge for rebounding from a lost set.

“For me, personally, just looking at all my best friends on the court, that truly calms me down and I know it calms them down as well.”

Miller recorded 18 kills and Wenger was key at the net with eight kills and eight blocks. The Aggies also got contributions from Graham Blanchard, Kenyon Wickliffe and Robinson before he went down with a lower left leg injury in the fourth set.

Lincoln Larson led Centennial with 19 kills. It’s the first boys volleyball state title for Arbor View and first appearance in the title game after the program reached the state semifinals four previous times.

“We can’t (win) with six, we have to do it with all 16,” Adarme said. “We’ve been training all of them to be ready for big moments and it was an amazing moment for Cooper (Ball, coming in for an injured Robinson) to be able to come in for us.

“We just had to know we couldn’t be outside of ourselves. Where we fell short in the past was trying to be more instead of focusing on what our role is and what our job is.”

Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlexWright1028 on X.

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