Missing in New Mexico brings together families still searching for lost loved ones

SANTA FE — Tony Medina said he’ll never stop looking for his son.

Medina, a Mountainair resident whose son Christopher went missing in 2023, represented one of at least seven families who gathered inside the New Mexico Department of Public Safety Headquarters gymnasium on Saturday to speak with law enforcement, submit DNA samples and connect with resources they hope could one day lead them to answers.

“We empathize with them,” said Octavian Valencia, a staff member at DPS who leads the New Mexico Missing Persons Clearinghouse. “The way I approach it, the way I see it, is if it was my family member, I would want any available resource, and anyone that I have questions for, to assist us. That’s how we train our staff — to understand that when a family member goes missing, they want answers.”

Saturday’s fourth annual Missing in New Mexico event was established in 2022 under Senate Bill 2. Valencia said the event offers families of missing persons a chance to speak with each other, law enforcement and his own staff, who he said serve as a key point of contact in managing the growing list of lost people in New Mexico.

“We have to be the first, sometimes that first responder when they call because they don’t know who to go to,” he said. “We help guide them in the right direction.”

Alongside New Mexico law enforcement agencies, including State Police, county sheriff’s offices and local police departments, the DPS missing persons division helps guide families left behind through the yearslong — and often indefinite — timelines they can face when a loved one disappears.

As of Nov. 12, Valencia said the National Crime Information Center listed 800 missing individuals in the state dating back to the year 1900, with 20 sets of unidentified human remains, which can be cross-checked with DNA samples submitted by families of missing persons.

Medina was one of several people who submitted a DNA sample at Saturday’s event.

“I talked to the state cops, the DOJ and then there was a table there that was able to help me put up billboards,” he told the Journal.

Medina felt the event was helpful overall, but he said that some information long known about his son’s disappearance in March 2023 was absent from law enforcement databases he and his family reviewed with authorities on Saturday.

The list of missing persons in New Mexico has grown in 2025 to include Taos County resident Melissa Casias, who was last see in June near her home in Ranchos de Taos, and Joel “Deano” Valdez, a Coyote lineman who last contacted his family while driving home from Silver City before he went missing in Santa Fe on Sept. 18.

New Mexico is also home to several Native American tribes, a population disproportionately affected by missing persons cases. Valencia said the state was the first to add tribal affiliation to the NCIC missing persons database.

The day before Missing in New Mexico, he said DPS held its first-ever missing persons training event for law enforcement agencies.

“We had federal partners from the FBI, and we had New Mexico State Police give a presentation on all the alerts,” he said, “the criteria for the alerts and resources available to agencies to help assist with those alerts. We let them know that they’re also a resource for agencies for missing person cases. OMI was also present for that.”

Medina said he believes his son, who he said got involved with a “bad crowd” years back, was likely murdered. He hopes whoever is responsible or was involved in the disappearance will one day come forward with an answer as to his son’s location.

“Anything that gets my son’s name out there, I believe, will eventually put pressure on the person that did take his life,” Medina said. “Hopefully they will come forward so we can bring my son home, and we could get a burial and get some closure.

“That’s all I could ask for, and that’s what I pray for for all the families. A person doesn’t know how this feels until it knocks at your door.”