Saturday, residents gathered at Veterans Memorial Park to raise awareness about long-term missing persons throughout the state of Louisiana.

“You really don’t understand unless it happens to you. I never thought something like this would happen to our family,” said Janae Dumesnil.

Crystal Grebinger went missing from a Lafayette women’s shelter in February 2013.

Her aunt Jeanne Savoy organized this walk to help spread awareness and invite other families of missing persons to share their stories as well.

“There was a lady named Joanne Lowitzer from Texas and she has a daughter that’s been missing since April 26 of 2010 and her name is Ali Lowitzer, said Savoy, “She actually inspired me to do the proclamation for our state.”

Janae Dumesnil’s sister Tyler went missing two years ago.

“It’s like living a lifetime movie, it’s crazy,” said Dumesnil, “She has two kids that adored her, me as a sister and two brothers that miss her. It’s crazy, it’s sickening but you just gotta pray.”

Members of the LSU FACES Lab attended the walk to take DNA swabs to keep in the system to try and help locate missing family members.

“We handle the DNA and we can utilize the DNA in the system to match up people that we find with family members and a lot of people are unaware that sometimes DNA is that missing puzzle piece, that’s all that we need,” said LSU FACES Grad Assistant Emily Wiegers, “We’re here today taking DNA swabs out of the cheek and we’re going to put that in our database and see if we have any matches.”

There are currently 245 long term missing persons throughout the state of Louisiana.