An English woman who spent the last 26 years searching for her child is planning to return to Kelowna, on the anniversary of his disappearance.
Denise Allan recently launched a crowd funding campaign that could allow her to return to Kelowna once again to memorialize her son, Charles Horvath, who was last seen May 26, 1989,
“Denise is now planning what will probably be ‘her final trek’ across the World from home in Richmond Upon Thames, England to Kelowna, B.C. Canada in May 2015, for a Memorial service, marking 26 very long years since Charles vanished without a trace,” reads the fundrazr page dedicated to the journey.
Thus far she’s raised under 10 per cent of the $2,800 needed for the trip.
Allan last heard from her son May 11, 1989. Charles arrived in Kelowna a week earlier, and during their conversation they discussed plans to meet up for a joint birthday celebration—his 21st, her 40th— in Asia.
It was a celebration they never got to share.
“He had maintained contact with his family throughout his travels and so, when he failed to finalize arrangements to meet them in Hong Kong as had been planned, he was reported missing by his mother Denise Allan,” said Const. Kris Clark, in a statement prepared for the 25th anniversary, last year.
Allan has never let the search die, draining her financial resources as she kept up the search.
She’s returned to Kelowna repeatedly, made countless appeals for information through media outlets, vigilantly kept his name alive through Facebook, as well as a number of missing person sites. In 2010, she even paid to have a missing person billboard erected in Kelowna, at a cost of $1,000 a month.
The billboard was put up in the “hope that the people who know where Charles’ body lays will find the courage to come forward and to tell somebody so that he will be taken home to England and laid to rest with his beloved Nana,” Allan told the Capital News in 2010.
“We still don’t have him home and the answer is here, in Kelowna. I’m still searching and I will do so until the end of my life.”
Horvath, 20, arrived in Kelowna May of 1989 as part of a cross Canada trek and was last seen May 26. Mounties say at the time Horvath vanished, he ws staying at the Tiny Town Trailer Park on Lakershore Drive where he left behind his personal belongings.
He was working for Flintstones Amusement Park, and during that month he was seen at Jonathan Seagalls with a man believed to be in his 50s.
While he’s been missing for the better part of three decades, police haven’t confirmed whether Horvath is dead and therefore if foul play is suspected.
There is just over a month left for the fundraising campaign. To learn more go to fundrazr.com, and type Denise Allan into the search bar.
If you have any information please contact the Kelowna RCMP at 250-762-3300. Remain anonymous by calling Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477, leaving an online tip at www.crimestoppers.net or texting CRIMES (274637), subject line ktown.
