29 years and no answers

Photo: Facebook

Twenty-nine years can seem like a lifetime when you're waiting for one phone call that never comes.

That's been life for Denise Horvath Allan, whose son Charles went missing in Kelowna nearly three decades ago while on a year-long trek across Canada.

Horvath, who was born in Canada but raised in England, came across the water to travel his birth-country in 1989. He last contacted his mother May 11 of that year in a fax saying he would call to firm up details of a holiday they were planning for August to celebrate his 21st birthday.

In a letter to a British online publication, Horvath Allan describes initial frustration of trying to get Canadian and British authorities to look into her son 's possible disappearance.

Horvath had been staying at the Tiny Town Tent and RV Park on Lakeshore Road while in Kelowna.

In her first of 15 trips to the Okanagan, Horvath Allan says the manager told her Charles had "gone out one day and never returned."

They eventually threw out all his belonging except for his Bible, rosary and a leather strap.

Horvath Allan believes her son got into an altercation with someone and was killed. She says an anonymous note given to her said Charles had been thrown into Okanagan Lake.

However, a dive team she hired three years after his disappearance turned up only the remains of a suicide victim from several years earlier.

She has had to sell her home to pay for the search and numerous billboards – but, so far, to no avail.

Closing in on her 69th birthday, Horvath Allan says she's running out of life, but believes if she works hard enough, "I’ll find answers and have closure."

"I’m still here, waiting for a phone call that never comes."