Aubrey Dameron was known for rooting for the underdog in her small town of Grove, Okla. When she saw someone who didn’t fit, she would always be the first person to reach out.
“If she saw someone who looked like they were maybe an outcast, she would be the person to welcome them in, and really sit down and get to know them,” says Dameron’s uncle Christian Fencer. “That’s just who she was. She just wanted to make sure that everyone felt like they had a place in the world. Kind of like a mother hen, making sure that everyone was good and doing well.”
Even though she was treated unkindly in high school as a transitioning transgender woman, she never let it get to her.
“I would find out that people had been mean, and her reply every time was, ‘It’s okay, Aunt Pam. I’ll just keep praying for them,'” her aunt Pam Smith tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue.
“I’ll never forget the way she greeted people,” Smith recalls. “The hug and the kiss on the cheek and, ‘How are you? I love you.’ She wanted to be accepted, she wanted to be loved, and she was full of love.”
Aubrey Dameron.Courtesy Christian Fencer
“She would sing your ear off,” says Fencer. “There was this coffee table in the middle of the living room that’s very sturdy. She would stand on, dance on, or lay on and just kind of go all out and give us a full performance. That’s just who she was.”
She wanted to take acting classes, he says, but “unfortunately, we were in poverty, so we couldn’t afford to take those classes. But she always wanted to dance and perform and sing for people.”
Dameron was 25 when she went missing from her home around 3 a.m. on March 9, 2019. Her mother said she last saw her daughter wearing a leather jacket and walking away from the house.
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Smith suspects foul play. “She just wouldn’t stop all communication with family,” she says. “She just wouldn’t go and disappear.”
“I wish that she was somewhere living her best life, but it’s not Aubrey,” says Fencer. “Anyone who knew Aubrey knew that she couldn’t not speak to her family for a long period of time.”
Since she went missing, Smith and Fencer have conducted searches and even created aFacebook pagededicated to her case.
“We share her face constantly to Facebook, letting people know that she is still missing,” says Fencer. “There’s no resting until we get answers.”
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“I have hope that we are going to get answers,” says Smith. “And I understand that it might not be the answers we want, but we just want to bring her home. We never imagined two years ago that we would be looking for a relative. You don’t ever think it’s going to be you. And then all of a sudden you just wake up and you’re in this nightmare.”
Anyone with information about Dameron’s disappearance is asked to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI ortips.fbi.govor the Cherokee Nation Marshal Service at 918-207-3800.
source: people.com
