‘We’d like her back’: Trottier family offers reward for information about missing woman

It has been more than four months since 22-year-old Mackenzie Lee Trottier was last seen by her family.

Now her family has organized a $20,000 reward for information leading to her return.

Trottier was last seen in the 300 block of Trent Crescent on Dec. 21. Her father, Paul, says she was going to meet some friends, but told her parents she would be home for Christmas.

Three days and a myriad of text messages later, her phone went dead; none of the texts had been answered.

“It’s kind of a tradition for us to spend Christmas Eve together as a family and then get up Christmas Day, open up our presents and eat some food,” Paul said. “When she didn’t show up, I started looking around for her.”

Since then, Trottier’s family has been hoping that someone somewhere knows something about where she may be. There’s a Facebook page dedicated to finding her, as well as a billboard campaign and a website.

Paul says fundraising was done through art auctions, raffles, personal donations and other community support. He says it’s  not only to try and entice someone into coming forward, but also to raise general awareness of others in Saskatoon who are missing.

“These people are missing — sometimes for a very long time — without any result,” he said. “So as we think about it, a reward brings attention to it and starts to really generate some conversation around the fact that Mackenzie is missing, but also that there are quite a few people missing.”

He has theories about what may have happened to Mackenzie. But the bottom line is that he believes his daughter is alive and may need help to come home.

“There are three options: She’s no longer with us, she’s hiding or she’s being held somewhere against her will,” he said. “We operate in the fact that she’s being held somewhere against her will.

“It’s not like Mackenzie to hide from us … and of course we don’t really want to deal with the first option because we need to remain hopeful and faithful that we’re going to get her home.”

To anyone who may have information about his daughter, Trottier has this to say: “This is our daughter and of course we want our daughter back. If people know where she is, or knew something about it, they can call Crime Stoppers, city police, RCMP detachments.

“This is a human being. This is someone that’s cared for. She has a really large community around her that misses her. We’d like her back.”

In February, Saskatoon police released a surveillance photo of a man who they say may know something about Mackenzie’s disappearance.

Anyone with information about the case can contact Saskatoon police at 306-975-8300 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.