Iwaasa family not letting COVID-19 dampen search for missing man

Fogen’s family recently moved back to Lethbridge from Honolulu, Hawaii.

“We ended up kind of packing up our whole life in Honolulu and moving it back to Alberta. I was born and raised in Lethbridge… [now we’re] closer to all my family and with all the search stuff going on, it just makes sense to be here.”

She said the COVID-19 pandemic made the move that more challenging, and in regard to the search for Marshal, Fogen said they haven’t been able to hold any more community gatherings to raise awareness on his disappearance, like they had done shortly after he went missing.

“Even thinking about future searches, it’s still risky and every province, and it sounds like almost every city, is taking it a little bit differently, so we want to be very mindful of everyone’s health and safety. That’s a primary concern when we’re thinking about anything that we want to do in the future relating to finding my brother.”

Fortunately, social media has come in handy, with the ‘Find Marshal Iwaasa’ Facebook page hosting over 12,000 members.

“I don’t know any other way in which I’d be able to put something out and potentially reach over 12,000 people at once just by one group setting. People are continuously inviting other people to join and are brainstorming ideas on how to get the word out and spread awareness and give us ideas of what they think,” she said.

“It’s a good platform for me and my family to be able to communicate and interact with everyone that’s there to support us because I can’t imagine any other platform in which I could communicate with up to 12,000 people at once.”

Fogen said social media has helped the family raise funds to go towards search efforts. They’ve also hired a private investigation team to aid in the search.

EXHAUSTIVE SEARCH AND POLICE INVOLVEMENT

Last week, an ‘exhaustive search’ in the backcountry area where Iwaasa’s truck was found began.

READ MORE: Exhaustive search for Marshal Iwaasa begins

Fogen noted that the Lethbridge Police Service, which is leading the investigation into her brother’s disappearance, has been the family’s main point of contact.

“Officers here are easy to reach, and they’ve been in communication with us as needed,” she said.

“This current search that’s going on, our PI team organized an extensive search, and I believe some of them are still there, so they’ve been giving me daily updates of what’s been going on up there and what there plans are for the future, but it’s hard because the cell service is so poor there, but they are keeping in contact and continuing to update us as well.”

She told LNN that family members have worked hard to support each other during the difficult time.

“I definitely would not be where we are without them, I can’t imagine doing this alone. It’s insane and scary and it would be so challenging to even figure out where to start.”

CONCERNS

A concern Fogen did mention was her brother’s disappearance “falling to the back-burner”.

“Especially with COVID going on. I understand reasons why people would be focusing on other things, but overall, I’ve seen a large amount of community support. Everyone’s still really involved, asking what they can do to help us, still spreading awareness, keeping Marshal’s posters up,” she remarked.

“It’s been amazing, the community response that we’ve had, [and] not just from Lethbridge but just from all over.”

Fogen described her brother as the nicest person she knows and said he would be there to help anyone. She did note that he’s quiet and shy and prefers to keep to himself.

“I think [he] would try to handle a lot of things on his own, so if he was in trouble or scared, he might try to persevere through it, but he would be there, he would still be friendly, he would still be kind to anyone that needed help.”

Fogen said the family’s focus now is to keep spreading awareness on Marshal’s disappearance.

“As far as a reach that we think we have based on how big our platform is, we still find that there’s people, even here locally, that aren’t aware of Marshal’s disappearance. To me that’s surprising but at the same time, it makes sense. To me, it’s my whole world, this is everything my life is about at this point,” she said.

“I think that everyone knows but at the same time there are people that have other things going on, they’re maybe not on Facebook or maybe don’t watch the news, lots of different things that we bleed into this but there are lots of people that don’t know.”

Fogen went on to say thank you to everyone in the community that has offered their support.

“We really could not do it without everyone’s support and we really appreciate and thank everyone for their support so far and appreciate everyone’s support moving forward,” she said.

“If they can continue to share and continue to help spread awareness or reach out to us, and join our ‘Find Marshal Iwaasa’ Facebook page…that’s how we continue to help spread awareness, by joining it or sharing it, we really appreciate it and could not do this alone.”

The Lethbridge Police Service has yet to release a further update since the ‘exhaustive search’ for Iwaasa started up last week.

by Justin Goulet

Iwaasa family not letting COVID-19 dampen search for missing man

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