Finding Grace

March 29, 2008
The Globe Gazette, IA
By DEB NICKLAY, deb.nicklay@globegazette.com

MASON CITY ­ It was the year that Michael Jackson introduced “Thriller.” Ronald Reagan was president. “Terms of Endearment” swept the Oscars.

It was also the year Grace Esquivel disappeared.

Grace, then 25, was last seen on June 10, 1983. She lived at 1619 N. Pennsylvania Ave. in Mason City with her daughter, Angie, 6.

Grace’s story has most likely faded in most memories. But not all.

“I don’t want anyone to forget about Grace,” said Angie Bunch, an area director in Iowa and Indiana for the Doe Network, a group nationwide volunteers who try to find the missing or identify the unknown. “I still have hope.”

Grace is just one of 200 cases of missing men, women and children in the two states she investigates. The 34-year-old Kentucky woman is familiar with each of them, even calling the victims by first names.

Bunch roams the Internet for information, updates files and contacts law enforcement in the hope of uncovering that one clue that might lead to a discovery. She works on multiple cases daily.

“There aren’t many nights I go to bed before 4 a.m.,” she said, her soft southern voice like velvet. “If you ask my fiancé or my children, they’ll say I have an addiction. But I believe this is a way I can help.”