Crime & Law

Cook County Missing Persons Day Aims to Offer Hope, Provide Closure

South Shore resident Diane Brooks was flipping through channels two years ago when she came across information about an upcoming local event for people with missing loved ones. Brooks immediately thought of her older cousin Rowena Barrett.

“It just came to me, ‘I think I should go,’ because it just didn’t seem a coincidence,” Brooks, 61, said of the TV segment that aired on WTTW. “We always knew she was missing, we always knew we didn’t know where she was.”

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office is hosting its sixth annual Missing Persons Day event from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office, 2121 W. Harrison St. The event aims to connect people with resources to locate missing loved ones.

At the event, friends and family can file a missing persons report and submit DNA samples, medical records and pictures to aid in the search. The event brings together partner agencies and counseling services with the aim of providing hope and closure.

Brooks attended the Cook County Missing Persons Day event in 2024. She brought with her two photos from a family album of Barrett during the 1970s. The family had not filed a missing persons report but had lost touch with Barrett and did not know her whereabouts. After providing more personal details about Barrett at the event, Brooks said she discovered Barrett died of natural causes in 2013.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office located at 2121 W. Harrison St. in Chicago. (Eunice Alpasan / WTTW News)

Growing up, Brooks said she looked up to Barrett. “She was just so sweet, so loving, kind, every time we would come over to the house,” Brooks said. Over the years, Brooks said, her older cousin “went off track” and would have occasions of “falling out” with her mother. The last time Brooks saw Barrett was about 1983 on a CTA bus, Brooks recalled. “It’s just always been something in our family, like, ‘What happened to Rowena?’” Brooks said.

While Brooks wasn’t wishing or hoping to find Barrett at “the morgue,” she said she had a feeling to at least check. Brooks didn't give it too much thought at the time, perhaps, not to get too emotional, she said.

Brooks recalled the moment at the Missing Persons Day event when she was shown a photo on a computer to verify it was Barrett. “She still remained youthful looking,” Brooks said. “It still looked like her even though her eyes were closed. I still knew that was her.”

Families who go to the event often come in feeling hopeful about being able to find their loved one, according to Cook County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Ponni Arunkumar. The event also gives people an opportunity to meet other families with missing loved ones, she said.

“I think giving them that hope and the closure that they have taken all the steps they need to to find their loved one, it helps them,” Arunkumar said.

Illinois has about 500 missing persons reports listed in a national database, according to Arunkumar.

The Chicago Police Department, Cook County Sheriff’s Police Department, Illinois State Police, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, representatives from the Polish and Mexican consulates, along with grief counselors will be in attendance at Saturday’s event.

Cook County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Ponni Arunkumar at her office on April 14, 2026. (Eunice Alpasan / WTTW News)

At the event, people with missing loved ones can also submit information into the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and look through binders with information on unidentified deceased people. In Cook County, there have been about 350 still-unidentified deceased people since 1984, according to Arunkumar.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office also lists some information about unidentified and unclaimed deceased people on its website. The office is responsible for investigating Cook County deaths in cases when the death is sudden, unexpected, due to violence or without any medical attendance. Of the roughly 50,000 people who die in Cook County each year, the office takes jurisdiction of about 7,000 cases, according to Arunkumar.

Since the first Cook County Missing Persons Day event in 2017, Arunkumar said, about 15 families have been able to get closure about their missing loved one. In some cases, loved ones are discovered to be alive, but in most cases, the missing person is found to have already died.

“The closure they can get sometimes is police may find that they’re living somewhere else, they’re at a nursing home,” Arunkumar said. “Sometimes, they have passed some years ago at a nursing home or a rehab facility that they were not aware of.”

Brooks said she discovered that her older cousin Barrett had been buried at Homewood Memorial Gardens. Her family is currently working on adding a new headstone on her grave.

“It was sad, but it was also closure,” Brooks said.

Contact Eunice Alpasan: [email protected]

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