Minnesota Parents Pray for Their Son’s Return

When the word ‘college’ is broached in a conversation various descriptions come to mind: parties, freedom, sleeping in, socializing, and financial responsibility.  For the more studious pupils first thoughts may include: exams, mass lectures, study groups, and papers.  These descriptions display two different views of college life but what neither of them include are concepts like: death, murder, drowning, and pain.  But it is these depictions that consume the parents of, University of St. Thomas student, Dan Zamlen, when college is mentioned. 

                 Nineteen year old Zamlen has been missing since April 5.  Zamlen had last been seen leaving a party early that morning and had phoned a friend as he walked home along the Mississippi River Bluffs.  Over 1,000 volunteers turned out to aid Zamlen’s family, the St. Paul Police Department, and the University in search of the missing teen.  They searched parks and wooded areas around the river, scanned with metal detectors to find the Zamlen’s cell phone, and knocked on thousands of doors to expand the search area but, so far a clue to his disappearance has yet to be found.  As of April 17, the reward for information pertaining to Zamlen has been doubled to $10,000.

            In response to her son’s missing status, Sally Zamlen is attempting to push a bill through legislature that would expand Minnesota’s missing children’s law to include adults as well.  By passing this law, dubbed Brandon’s Law after a young adult who went missing one year ago while talking on the phone with his father, the Zamlen’s hope to force faster, more intensive searches for young adults.  In response to the comment that as a nineteen year old adult he has the right to disappear, Mrs. Zamlen demanded evidence that supported the claim that he did not want to be found.  If passed the bill will not regulate how investigators run their searches, when they begin, or how hard they search, but it will specify a uniform approach to determine whether a young adult is missing.

            Mr. Zamlen feels that the police have been supportive and have done all that they could considering the situation.  Mrs. Zamlen believes that so much more could have been done in the first few hours of her son’s disappearance.  Although Mr. and Mrs. Zamlen have conflicting views when it comes to the search for their son, they both still hold hope for his safe return.