Saturday is the 21st annual New York State Missing Persons Day at the Empire State Plaza’s Cultural Education Center. It comes as legislators continue to work to prevent human trafficking and kidnapping and assist crime victims and families, including in this year's budget.

“You just wish that somebody would see this and make that phone call and just say, ‘OK, this is where she is,’” said Mary Lyall, while holding a large print of a coaster with her daughter Suzanne’s photo printed on it.

Lyall has been waiting for that phone call for 26 years. The coaster is one of many the Center for Hope, the organization she cofounded with her late husband Doug in the wake of Suzanne’s disappearance, made to distribute to restaurants in hope that someone who knows something would call with information.

She said the work they have done with Center for Hope has been in an effort to keep their daughter’s name out there, and help other families going through similar trauma.

Suzanne, an expert in computer science in the earliest years of the internet, was last seen getting off of a bus at SUNY Albany in March of 1998 after leaving her job at Crossgates Mall. Her mom said she transferred there from SUNY Oneonta looking for more expertise in the then-blossoming field.

“She never made it back to her room, and that was the last she was seen,” she said.

In addition to the coasters, Center for Hope has distributed playing cards to prisons, hoping people would come forward with information, and spearheaded the construction of the towering New York State Missing Person’s Remembrance near the Cultural Education Center in Albany, among countless other initiatives.

Lyall has also been part of a significant legislative push to increase education, awareness and prevention, and alongside her and Doug at the forefront of that push has been state Senator Jim Tedisco, a longtime supporter of New York State Missing Persons Day.

“It only takes one piece to maybe get information that can lead you to finding that child or adult who is missing alive, or at least finding them and get some type of closure,” he said.

Tedisco is still leading the charge, with his legislation included in the Executive Budget requiring security cameras in New York state parks in response to a high-profile kidnapping at Moreau Lake State Park last fall.

“Every park — entrance and exit — has to have a camera because if we had it here, in one hour, we would have been at his house,” he said.

He told Spectrum News 1 that in addition to prevention, he is preparing legislation to help victims who have survived their ordeal access to mental health services.

“When they have to go through this over and over again to get testimony, it’s bad enough what they went through, but to have to visually be in front of their abductor,” he said.

Also making the cases of missing persons a legislative priority is state Senator Lea Webb, who is focusing on victims of human trafficking.

Webb was a leading force behind a legislative package that included the Missing BIPOC Women & Girls Task Force, signed in to law in December, along with legislation to distribute information about those who are missing to high visibility areas in transportation hubs. Upon signing the bill into law, Gov. Kathy Hochul said the task force would "assess the epidemic of missing women and girls," while addressing discrepancies in the care with which those, cases are treated and developing policies to increase community education.

“More than 250,000 women go missing in our country as of 2020, and of that 40 percent are Black women and girls,” Webb said of the task force. “When you only make up 12 percent of the population, those numbers are glaring and we know that often times in these instances, people have been designated as runaways, when in fact they have been kidnapped.”

Webb said when it comes to addressing the issues across the board, it takes everyone in the community working as one, and the Lyalls have led by example.

“I am appreciative to the family of Suzanne because it most certainly takes members in our communities working together, not only to raise awareness but to actively work together to address these challenges,” she said. “You need elected officials, you need community members, state agencies and organizations to help, it is an epidemic.” 

New York State Missing Persons Day is Saturday. The Cultural Education Center and is open to the public from 1 to 4 p.m.