Chris Coan search passes year mark

One year after the disappearance of Enoch teenager Chris Coan, family and investigators are continuing the search, trying to find out what happened to Coan.

Although the trail is cold, and has been since December 2007, the search is still alive, private investigator Marquita Davis said.

"The search continues," she said. "There are really no new leads, no anything, but I will tell you that we have followed every lead that was possible."

Davis said she has followed tips in New Mexico and Colorado which led to nothing, but still spends hours daily working on the case.

"(There are) homeless shelters we're searching," she said. "There's a monthly search of prisons. Coroners' offices are contacted on a monthly basis. This is definitely still an active case."

Detective Jackson Ames of the Enoch Police Department, said officers are working with Davis and Dave Coan, Chris Coan's father, to follow up on leads.

"We're both just kind of tag-teaming," he said. "Any information or leads (Davis) gets that she feels like we can help with, she's passing along to us, and vice versa. We continue to get calls on a semi-regular basis. Not nearly as much now, obviously."

The investigation right now consists mostly of following the public's tip-offs, Ames said.

"We're continuing to follow up on those leads," he said. "Our main concern is to make sure that he's all right and that he's safe. We, as a police department, would love to confirm that if we could. That's kind of where our efforts are directed."

As well as following tips, another tactic being employed is to continue getting Chris Coan's name, photo and information out on the Internet, Davis said.

"We are really getting some great organizations involved in helping with the search," she said. "The search is going nationwide. As far as Internet media goes, we're hoping to get more exposure with newspapers, television, things like that."

Davis said organizations like the Jason Project, Destiny Search and even MySpace are being used to spread the word about the search for Chris Coan.

The Coan family has even set up a Web site specifically dedicated to the search, www.findchris.org.

An awareness event had been scheduled for Saturday, but was cancelled because it would have competed with SkyFest, Dave Coan said.

"We didn't want it clashing with (SkyFest)," he said."There's always something going on every weekend, so we don't really know what we're going to do right now. We haven't re-scheduled it."

Although the community has been helpful, it is frustrating to keep people from forgetting, Dave Coan said.

"The people in the community have always been helpful, it's just a year later, it's hard to hold peoples' interest," he said.

Davis said the circumstances surrounding Chris Coan's disappearance seem suspicious to her and to the Coan family.

"It's our opinion that it's very suspicious," she said. "It's been way too long and there's no sign of the vehicle on anything. Nothing's come up."

As far as necessities, Chris Coan had only $100 and the clothes on his back, when there were eight hours when he could have come home and retrieved money, clothing, food and other items of value without being seen, but didn't, Davis said.

Dave Coan said he just wants to know what happened to his son.

"Because of his age, Chris is over 18, we can't get help from the FBI or anything like that," he said. "At this point, a year later, we're almost hoping we'll hear something, or we'll hear from him. It's just a big country and a lot of area to look through."