Emily’s Gift

to Michaela and Dave

I know, this is absurdly delayed in sending; thank you for continuing to check in. I apologize. Please know I’m covering as many bases as I can, obviously as fast as a turtle in high heels.

TOP Priority is Michaela! She and Dave are finally getting married September 27, THIS 9/27/25.

Dave's Proposal to Michaela

I can honestly tell you she has been absolutely, positively, unequivocally indispensable!

Following is a list, but it isn’t just a list. Please read slowly and try to digest the hours each task took/takes – please!!!

Michaela set up Communication Command Center extraordinaire by herself without being asked.

Communication Command Center in Action

Not until the needs and escalation of information increased, did she enlist the help of family and friends with special skill sets that could help her. None of us had any clue the details that would need to be taken care of, i.e., but not limited to:

setting up a dedicated Emily email EmilyUpdates2024@gmail.com, “womaning” that email by dialoguing with those who use it and forwarding them on to me.
creating and updating spreadsheets for tracking dates and times, contacts (political entities, special services such as search teams and devices, volunteers etc.), tips and references for those such as legal assistance, podcasters, crime solvers, mainstream media, and not so mainstream entities, etc.
designing and setting up the billboard and rotating gas station adds with the permission and significant funding of her boss.
brainstorming creative ideas for fundraisers (including researching cross country legalities).
designing and maintaining Emily’s web site (www.EyesForEmily.com), Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61561441812867 and Instagram pages (https://www.instagram.com/eyesforemily/), the petition site (successful and closed) and Go Fund Me (https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-the-search-for-emily-rea%20%20%20%EF%BB%BF) pages.
setting me up and ever so patiently schooling me in the use of the Google suite and other useful helps and apps I’d not yet used.
making and selling her own jewelry to assist in funding.
helping fill in Emily history blanks, lending insight, commiserating with the seemingly never-ending delays and what was/is seen as lack of coordination and information, adding well placed humor.
shielding me from harsh pushbacks
making the trip from MA to MT to assist me (with one of my brothers and sister-in-law) to pack up Emily’s belongings on a tight time frame.
managing all of this while being the president of a dominant and respectable marketing company as it went through the acquisition/sale process, planning a wedding and most incredibly, dealt personally with the second loss of a best friend. They are three peas in a pod, Tres Amigos, BFFs: Liv, Emily and Michaela. BFF… the last F = FOREVER. Michaela, they will indeed be in your heart, mind and memories forever.

Miracles still do happen; chapter not yet closed though the physical absence and loss of Liv and Emily are real.

Michaela succeeded in accomplishing all of these with great aplomb and without a single grumphhh, unkind word or even an inkling of "you want me to do what? WHEN?"

Emily and Michaela The Business Side of Michaela Em & Michaela chillin' in MT

I say finally engaged because Michaela and Dave have postponed not only vacations and personal plans but also their wedding to assist with the above list involving Emily’s disappearance. With a bit of encouragement and dare I say permission, she and Dave set a wedding date, 9/27/25.

I am requesting a uniquely fun form of help from you. Emily’s Gift. A way to help Michaela and Dave redeem some of the missed adventures and unstressed togetherness. If any of you have or have access to a second home, camp, timeshare etc., which you would be willing to make available to Michaela and Dave, would you? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could have one destination vacation a month for the next year? It doesn’t matter what state; arrangements can be made.

If you’d like to participate in thanking Michaela, here’s a simple-to-use link to a form with instructions:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeb7th1ej5evhXvYJwczRvxub8fxHO-z3EG_x3sLqObWOghkg/viewform?usp=header

If you don’t have a vaca spot to offer and would like to help send them on their way, of course you’re not confined to Emily’s Gift. On that form are non-vacation options with a link as well and a way to reach Michaela directly via email. This is what extended community is all about!

Now for some Emily Search Updates:

We hosted an organizational rally on a gorgeous day with the willing hands and gifts of many which kicked off a petition signing drive.
With the help of many, near and far, we successfully collected over 5200 petition signatures which were hand and electronically delivered to Austin Knudsen, MT’s Attorney General.
Which precipitated a direct call from the head of Montana’s Department of Justice’s DCI.
Gene and Sandy Ralston (deep-water sonar) returned and scanned for a week until inclement weather, including 6” of snow on the summer solstice, sent them home to Idaho with no further finding. They will not be returning a third time.
The services of a well screened and reputable Private Investigator have been enlisted.
He continues to conduct interviews and research many leads. After 2+ months of sleuthing, he too believes Emily’s disappearance was not accidental. The challenge is to prove it – please continue to pray for those who have information, to be forthcoming and for the truth to be found…along with Emily!
He had a meeting with several officials familiar with the case at the Sheriff’s Office last Friday.
Information was shared bilaterally and part of Emily’s case file was given to him.
Thanks to your generosity, the PI’s contract has been extended.
Emily’s computer is currently residing with the FBI – data access very difficult to obtain.
Car and paddle board remain with the Sheriff’s office for possible further processing.
Forensic accountants and cyber security experts have continued to conduct their research.

Please continue to pray

for enough solid evidence of foul play for a federal agency to be invited in by the Sheriff’s office for assistance.
for miracles! Please try not to weary of praying for Emily as you would your own friends and family. There are answers, we just don’t know when and where they will come.

Today’s mission: the biggest Thank You possible being sent to Michaela and Dave.

There aren’t enough words to describe the depth of gratitude and known cost.

Walking that practiced walk of faith,

Nina (aka Mama) Rea

This Is My Mug and I'm Sipping From It

Michaela Schwartz
Jul 16
5 min read

How does one even begin to encapsulate an entire year of searching for our daughter Emily Rea and the voids that are left?

Yes, today is the one-year mark of living in a tediously fast-paced dimension into which we were tossed in an instant. Today could be a day full of empty, but it’s not, partly due to you!

This post will be a diversion from my typically picturesque and allegorical posts. A nutshell of bullets. I promise to name-drop next time!

Successes since the last post:

Organizational Show Up and Sign Up for Emily Rally
- So much help and numerous printing resources given for Rally flyer distribution
- Businesses that stepped up to donate set-up materials for Rally
- Wonderful donations for the gift drawing to help raise funds for a Private Investigator
- Never Stop Praying T-shirts available
- 3rd generation Emily plants available
- Great music: a fiddle piece composed by friend, local guitar artist and surprise vocals.
- Sign-ups for local help such as new flyer distribution, foot search volunteers, supplies, etc.
- Numerous local media “outlets” came to help share Emily’s story and publicize request for additional help
Return of the deep-water sonar specialists, Gene and Sandy Ralston
- Scanned for a week+ until a summer solstice snow and following inclement weather drove them off the water and home to Idaho!
Petition posted and circulated to encourage the local Sheriff to invite a federal agency’s assistance in Emily’s search
- Over 5200 signatures; online and hand gathered were delivered to and received by the Attorney General of MT
- Subsequent assistance offered
Paddle-out, a peaceful and powerful gathering to bring awareness to the continuing search for Emily
- envisioned and organized by one of Emily’s local paddle boarding friends; gorgeous weather!
Engaged a Private Investigator
- As stated elsewhere, ”We appreciate not only his credentials and work experience, but also his demeanor and desire to work with us in cooperation with the Sheriff’s Office in a professional and complimentary manner.
- We are confident that joining together, with the ultimate goal of finding Emily, his help will ease the burdens of time and resource demands on the Sheriff’s office.”
Continued Flathead Valley community support and involvement demonstrated in so many tangible ways
An uptick in Go Fund Me Funds: A little over ½ of initial $60K goal has been reached
- Through our MT accountant, we have meted out funds as judiciously and with as much scrutinizing as possible to get done what needs to be done in the best way possible at the time.
- Although we will NEVER stop looking for Emilly and what has happened to her, as mentioned, there will be a logical and realistic end to the request for resources and funds. This is not yet it!. We have taken a step forward by hiring the help of a PI,
- To our knowledge, outside of our privately funded PI, a formal criminal investigation has yet to even be begun.
- If so inclined, we do need additional funds to bolster the account.

(in not doing what I did as a young Girl Scout by buying my own cookies, how about considering sharing our need with someone new – spread the wealth (request) so to speak.)

In spite of a wretched circumstance, there have been and will be more blessings and great good to come from working together in our efforts to find Emily. We all grieve differently and find silver linings within that grief. I’d like to invite you to share what has been a “goodness” finding along this path.

There are two contributors to this post today. The second is Michaela Schwartz, Emily’s bestest, best friend ever from their first day of college. I can tell you she is amazingly gifted, incredible at a keyboard and innovative ideas, is funny, contemplative and has been more of a gift to me than you could ever know. Hear from the depths of her aching soul.

Grief and I are old friends. Perhaps that’s why it’s no surprise that these words hit me so deeply; or that the loss of the author (Andrea Gibson) two days before this Big Day feels like a tug on the strings of fate.

So much of the past year has been centered on a question: where are you?

One year later, my social media feeds are filled with these words, this loud answer inked in pixels.

“I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living.”

It’s not the answer I want. It is the answer I’m getting, and I am trying to be grateful for that. It takes work to bring my awareness to the connection I still feel with Emily. But I am doing the work.

I am getting married in about 2 months to my sweetie, Dave. Emily is supposed to be next to me. I weep for that loss; it feels deeply unfair.

“When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand.”

Dr. Pauline Boss is a psychologist who works primarily on what she has coined ambiguous loss - a loss that lacks clarity or resolution. I have learned that this flavor of grief is different from the grief I am familiar with.

“Ambiguous loss makes us feel incompetent. It erodes our sense of mastery and destroys our belief in the world as a fair, orderly, and manageable place. But if we learn to cope with uncertainty, we must realize that there are differing views of the world, even when that world is less challenged by ambiguity. If we are to turn the corner and cope with uncertain losses, we must first temper our hunger for mastery. This is the paradox.”

I set out to write something about Emily, but it seems instead that I want to use this space to talk about grief. Make space for it. Hold its hand. Let it walk with me today, tomorrow, on my wedding day.

Today, I will be thinking about my cheek as a perennial garden. A garden whose soil has been made richer by Emily. By the sweetness of an enduring soul-level friendship that I know I am lucky to have experienced. I’ll be thinking about how soothing it is to be snuggled up on Em’s couch, the sound of a crackling fire in the wood stove, and the sweet rhythm of Hugo snoring.

Emily is pressing her palms against the soft walls of my living.

Yes, this could have been a day full of empty, but it wasn’t. This mug states the source of my strength. It’s my mug and I’m sipping from it!

Mama (bear) Rea