The Thread

[gentle music] On Tuesday, January 7th, 2020, a woman named Sonya Addis was at work when she got on social media and saw a post that stated her cousin, 29-year-old Daniel Reok, was missing.

The information was shocking.

She'd been pretty busy with her own family and kids over the holidays and briefly remembered her father, Robert, mentioning that Daniel hadn't been seen for a while.

But she'd sort of forgotten about that comment until she was staring at the online post that said he was missing.

So right away she called her dad, who told her he'd just filed a missing persons report with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Squamish.

Daniel had a rough life growing up, and when he was 10 years old, Sonya's parents adopted him.

He'd grown up in their household and gotten so close with his cousins that Sonya told me she sometimes refers to him as her brother.

But for the sake of clarity in this episode, we'll stick with the term cousin.

Anyway, her father, Robert, had first noticed Daniel was absent about a month prior in early December 2019.

Sonya told me that one of her uncles who lived in Ontario had died around that time, and her dad had flown out there to be with family and help with arrangements.

After being in Ontario for a few days, though, Robert had told his wife that he hadn't heard from Daniel in a while and thought it would be good for someone to get ahold of him to inform him of the recent death in the family.

He also said someone should buy him a plane ticket so he could attend the funeral.

But pinning down where Daniel was living at that time proved difficult for his relatives because he'd been sort of in between places after separating from the mother of his two kids and returned to substance use.

Robert eventually got ahold of Daniel's former partner, and she told him that she hadn't seen Daniel in a while.

So with no luck there, Robert then went down a list of some of Daniel's close associates and friends, but none of those folks had seen him recently either.

Robert was determined to get some answers, though, so he went as far as contacting Daniel's current parole officer to see when they'd last laid eyes on Daniel.

But his nephew's usual parole officer was out that week, and the person filling in for them wouldn't give Robert any information.

Like, whatsoever.

So after that, Robert gave up on his quest for the time being and figured Daniel was probably just somewhere in the area and would pop up eventually.

Shortly before Christmas, though, Robert returned to British Columbia from Ontario and once again grew curious about where Daniel was and why no one had seemed to have bumped into him.

To get to the bottom of the mystery, Robert visited Totem Hall on the Squamish territory, which is where Sonya told me the members of the Squamish Nation and community headquartered their offices.Totem Hall was also where Daniel, as a member, would regularly go pick up funds that the nation issued to its members.

He was due a Christmas bonus check, so Robert assumed the woman in the office at Totem Hall who gave out those checks might have remembered him coming by.

When he asked the clerk if she'd seen Daniel recently, she indicated that she thought she had.

Sonya told me this woman said she'd spotted Daniel the week prior.

She said he'd been with his ex-girlfriend and their two kids to pick up his bonus check.