Dan was 24 years old when he disappeared.

By LUCY ORMONDE

I first met Loren O’Keeffe in January of 2007. We were both studying abroad for six months at a Japanese university.

We weren’t particularly close, but as two of just a handful of Australians in the small town, we’d sometimes share an Asahi beer and talk about life back home.

Once we’d returned from Japan, I didn’t hear from Lauren until late July of 2011, until a desperate Facebook post caught my attention.

Lauren’s younger brother Dan was missing…

Dan was 24 years old when he disappeared.

On Friday morning he was talking to his dad in the kitchen of the family’s Geelong home. A few minutes later he was gone. And none of his loved ones knew where.

At 10.00pm that night, the family officially registered Dan as a Missing Person.

“He was last seen wearing a grey hooded jumper, light pants and ugg boots,” they wrote. That text formed the basis of Missing Person posters that were distributed via social media to friends and family members around the state.

At the time that Dan disappeared, I was working for a newspaper in the south-west region of Victoria. Police believed Dan might have travelled in that direction; that he could be sleeping in an abandoned farm shed or seeking refuge in a homeless shelter. So I contacted Loren to see if there was anything the newspaper could do to help.

Over the next few weeks, we ran stories appealing to the locals to keep an eye out for Dan.

“Daniel is currently suffering from depression, but is friendly, approachable and talkative,” Loren told me in an interview. “He is 24 years old, approximately six feet tall, with short brown hair and hazel eyes. He will have a beard by now”.

Unfortunately there were never any confirmed sightings in the area and two years later, Dan is still missing.

His family remain desperately searching for answers.

In the two years since her brother’s disappearance, I’ve watched Loren lead the way in creating awareness of missing people in Australia. She started with a Facebook page dedicated to looking for Dan (the page now has almost 37,000 likes). She’s since used that page to share the information of other missing persons. She’s appeared on numerous TV shows and in newspaper articles.

In December 2011, Loren wrote a piece for Mamamia titled “Dan, Where are you?”

The worst (and most common) question to answer is ‘What does your gut tell you?’. Those ‘feelings’ people get in the movies; they’re not guaranteed. I have no idea what, how or where. It plagues our minds – we just don’t know.

The only thing we do know is that Dan is in Australia. He left without ID, money, his watch or any other belongings, besides his phone (which wasn’t answered the whole day of his disappearance and has been off since that night). He’s just walked away from it all.

Considering someone goes missing every 15 minutes in Australia, we’ve been fortunate with media coverage. I’ve quit my job to manage it, but we’ve had people all over the country putting posters up in their local shops, metropolitan train stations, along major highways. That kind of support has been overwhelming, but Dan is still missing.

This close to Christmas and without even one lead, we’ve been forced to offer a reward. I worry it’ll attract the kind of people who could lead us on a wild, emotional and time-wasting goose chase, but it’s a risk we have to take.

If you can help me find him, by means of social media, donation or physically putting a poster up, I’d be so grateful. I promise – he’s worth it (just as I’m sure your brother, son, boyfriend or nephew would be).

More recently, Loren has established the Missing Persons Advocacy Network (MPAN) – a group that aims to create awareness of missing persons in Australia.

According to the group’s website: “All MPAN initiatives promote a greater understanding of the issues surrounding why people go missing, with a focus on empowering the public to make a difference by simply keeping a look out for our mothers, brothers, sons, daughters and friends. ”

This is a video Loren made with Australian actress Deborah Mailman to encourage people “to come together and start talking about what’s happening in our community.”

This week is National Missing Person’s Week.

Thirty five thousand people go missing every year in Australia. Ninety five per cent are found within the first week of their disappearance. But for the other 1600 and their families – like the O’Keeffes – there is no news. There is nothing.

Take the family of Sally Cheong. Sally disappeared in 2008 from her Oakleigh South home just before her 22nd birthday. Five years later, her family are still searching.

Then there’s the story of Jenny Karmas and her husband. In August 2011, Jenny told her husband Sam she loved him as she left the house in the morning. When she returned to the house later that evening, the doors were unlocked and Sam was gone.

Rachael O’Keane’s 16-year-old brother Donny disappeared from the site where the family was camping at Echuca on September 1, 2012.

The next day, an elderly woman from the area told police she had fed a boy who matched Donny’s description, but no one has since him since.

Public awareness is the key to helping these families find their loved ones because the more people are familiar with the names and faces of missing persons, the better chance we have of recognising thm and bringing them home.

I never knew Dan. I only briefly knew Loren but over the years I have watched her from afar. I’ve watched her go from a twenty-something looking for an adventure, to a woman who has given up everything to look for her lost brother.

Because when a person goes missing, it’s not just the individual who disappears. Their families and their friends go missing too.

They put their lives on hold while they desperately search for answers. They quit their jobs. They stop seeing their friends. They can’t move on until there is closure.

But for many, that closure might never come.

I can’t even fathom what it would be like to never know if someone you love – your brother, your sister, your mum, your dad, your partner, your child – was gone forever or just for a while. The pain of wondering if they are alive or dead, is beyond my comprehension.

But I can understand why Loren is doing everything she possibly can to bring her brother home.

And it’s with that, that I ask you all to head to Missing Persons Advocacy Network (MPAN), like Dan Come Home on Facebook, take a look through this gallery – and click SHARE on this post. The more people who know, the more who might one day be able to help.

And ask yourself: have I seen any of these people?