This is part three in a three-part series about Tracy Day and her family’s ongoing search for answers. Read part one here and part two here.
Juneau woman Tracy Day has been missing for more than seven years. And while her disappearance has become a rallying cry for the families of missing and murdered Indigenous people in Juneau, her daughter, Kaelyn Schneider, also wants people to know who she was before she went missing.
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Schneider said her mom was always finding new adventures for the family to go on. The house she grew up in was spotless, and Day was taking night classes to be a nurse. Her struggles with mental health came later.
“But I feel like, when she went missing, everybody was like, ‘Oh, she’s living in St. Vincent. And like, she’s a mentally ill addict.’ It was just not the way I wanted people to see her,” she said. “Because my mom was a wonderful parent, and she wasn’t always sick.”
Schneider said when she was a young child, she was the victim of child sex abuse by her friend’s father. After Day found out what had happened, she blamed herself for trusting the family. Schneider believes it triggered Day’s mental health issues.
“It changed her brain chemistry,” she said. “That’s the best way I could explain it.”
Schneider thinks that changed the trajectory of her mother’s life. Day struggled with mental illness and substance abuse.
But Schneider wants people to know her mom the way she remembers her, as a dignified, glamorous woman
“She was kind of like a diva,” she said. “Like back in the day, she always had her hair done, lipstick done, nails, everything. She was always dressed so beautifully.”
She was also a devoted parent, and she was fun.
“When she wasn’t at work, we were never bored,” Schneider said. “We would go ride our bike and we would get curly fries with cheese and milkshakes, and then we would go to the duck pond and feed the ducks. And she was a good, playful parent.”
Schneider said that even through Dayʼs later mental health crises, she always stuck around and checked in with her family.
“She would not take off. She’s the opposite,” she said. “She’s like, the parent that annoys you, because they’re showing up so much.”
Schneider’s son was born after Day went missing. He’s five years old now and she found herself having to explain his grandmother’s absence to him.
“My son, he’s at that age where he’s starting to question, like, ‘What happened to grandma?’ And like, ‘Why is she not in your life?’” she said. “And you know, like, he always asks — it’s so horrible — he always asks, like, ‘Are you gonna disappear?’ As a mom, that is just horrible. Knowing that my son, like, has that thought in his head, because he knows it’s a possibility.”
So Schneider said, for him and for her newborn son, she will keep looking for the truth of what happened to her mom.
“I really want to keep searching and talking about her case, not only for me, but also for my sons. I want them to know that people are still interested and care,” she said.
