Jun 17, 2026 · 42 min · 14 segments
Our card this week is Kelsie Schelling, the 10 of Spades from Colorado. In February 2013, 21-year-old Kelsie Schelling had just learned she was eight weeks pregnant. Hours after her first prenatal…
Ashley FlowersHost
Kevin TorresGuest
Laura SaxtonGuest
[mysterious music] Before anyone knew Kelsi Schelling as a missing person, Laura Saxton knew her simply as her sweet, vibrant daughter.
Kelsi, I mean, just from the time she was a very little girl, was just always, like, full of life, full of energy, like, just very active and very loving, but, but spirited.
But really soft-hearted, I would say, very caring, very non-judgmental with people.
She was just really a, a bubbly type personality, just very, like, sparkling eyes and a very beautiful smile.
Kelsi spent the spring and summer of 2012 attending college in Costa Mesa, California.
But by the fall, financial pressures brought her back home to Colorado, where she'd grown up.
She settled in Denver, got her own place and a full-time job, and she reconnected with her on-again, off-again boyfriend of the last two years, Donthe Lucas.
Now, they'd met when they attended Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colorado.
She'd been at Northeastern studying psychology, and Donthe was a popular six-foot-seven basketball star at the school, with dreams of playing in the NBA one day.
When they were together, friends and family say that Kelsi was devoted and committed to Donthe in a way that they didn't always see returned.
In fact, when they were together, Donthe never even met Kelsi's mother, Laura.
But I think that he didn't necessarily want her, but he didn't want anybody else to have her either.
And so she would just tell me things like, you know, "Oh, he's flirting with this girl or that girl," or whatever, and then when she would be just about ready to just give up, like she'd had enough of it, then he would really, like, pour on the charm and, like, treat her really well to suck her back in.
It's hard to say why certain relationships get such a chokehold on people and pull them back in.
His basketball career hadn't worked out, and he was bouncing between staying at his mom's house and his grandma's house.
[mysterious music] Before anyone knew Kelsi Schelling as a missing person, Laura Saxton knew her simply as her sweet, vibrant daughter.
Kelsi, I mean, just from the time she was a very little girl, was just always, like, full of life, full of energy, like, just very active and very loving, but, but spirited.
But really soft-hearted, I would say, very caring, very non-judgmental with people.
She was just really a, a bubbly type personality, just very, like, sparkling eyes and a very beautiful smile.
Kelsi spent the spring and summer of 2012 attending college in Costa Mesa, California.
But by the fall, financial pressures brought her back home to Colorado, where she'd grown up.
She settled in Denver, got her own place and a full-time job, and she reconnected with her on-again, off-again boyfriend of the last two years, Donthe Lucas.
Now, they'd met when they attended Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colorado.
She'd been at Northeastern studying psychology, and Donthe was a popular six-foot-seven basketball star at the school, with dreams of playing in the NBA one day.
When they were together, friends and family say that Kelsi was devoted and committed to Donthe in a way that they didn't always see returned.
In fact, when they were together, Donthe never even met Kelsi's mother, Laura.
But I think that he didn't necessarily want her, but he didn't want anybody else to have her either.
And so she would just tell me things like, you know, "Oh, he's flirting with this girl or that girl," or whatever, and then when she would be just about ready to just give up, like she'd had enough of it, then he would really, like, pour on the charm and, like, treat her really well to suck her back in.
It's hard to say why certain relationships get such a chokehold on people and pull them back in.
His basketball career hadn't worked out, and he was bouncing between staying at his mom's house and his grandma's house.
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