Patricia Salamandyk: Can sketch help solve 43-year-old cold case?

More than four decades after 16-year-old Patricia Salamandyk vanished without a trace from Spruce Grove, RCMP are hoping a sketch will help solve the riddle of her disappearance.

As the school year was winding down in early June 1972, Salamandyk opted to skip class to head up the highway to Edmonton, just a few miles away.

The Grade 9 student was never seen again.

Elsie Gross still can't talk about her older sister without breaking down.

"You go through the motions and you survive," she said.

Salamandyk grew up on a dairy farm near Spruce Grove. By all accounts, she was a happy, well-adjusted girl.

"I never got a sense anything was wrong that day," Gross said. "I just remembered saying to her 'don't be late for the bus or you'll be in trouble.'"

One by one, police ruled out the possibilities — that Salamandyk had taken off with older friends; that she'd run away to join a commune out west — until investigators reached a dead end.

"I never got an indication she planned it, because she didn't take anything that was important to her," Gross said.

Six years after her sister's disappearance, Gross again went to investigators, only to find more dead ends.

"She hadn't worked, married, left the country or died legally. There was no trace of her. She had a social insurance number, but it was never used."

Despite a lack of information over the years, Insp. Gibson Glavin says the RCMP is now taking the rare step of re-opening the cold case.

"It's a long time but there's no reason someone should give up hope," he said. "There's more to know."

Now, investigators are re-interviewing witnesses, collecting DNA and have released a sketch of what Salamandyk, who would now be 60, could look like today.

"We'd like to find Patricia alive and reunite her with her family," Glavin said. "That would be our ultimate hope."

Realistically? "We aren't hopeful with re-uniting — that would be a miracle — but closure."