Seven years after Tracy Day went missing, her daughter remembers her love
- Jasz Garrett
- 16 hours ago
- 7 min read
Kaelyn Schneider still hopes for justice, for her mom and all MMIP families
By Jasz Garrett
Juneau Independent
Tracy Lynn Day, a Lingít woman from the Deisheetaan clan, went missing in Juneau on Valentine’s Day in 2019.
She was declared dead by the Juneau court in June of 2025, although she has never been found. Day would be 50 years old now.
Her daughter, Kaelyn Schneider, said she requested the declaration to settle Day’s estate. Seven months later, the death is still not legally recognized since Schneider has had trouble obtaining her mother’s legal documents from family members, such as Day’s birth certificate and Social Security card.
“I’m going to have to just pay for them,” Schneider said in an interview last week. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, but I did take a break because I’m pregnant and it’s just a lot of stress.”
But Schneider said the primary goal behind her mother’s death declaration was not to settle her family’s estate — she was hoping the Juneau Police Department would release evidence about her mother’s case.
“They never did,” Schneider said. “I asked every possible question of different scenarios and it was very counterproductive answers. They said the case is still ongoing, so we can’t release it.”
She said JPD is not actively investigating Day’s open case because there is no new information. Detective Patrick Taylor, who originally investigated her case, left the department in 2024. Schneider said a new detective hasn’t been assigned to the case and none will be unless there is new information, so she doesn’t understand how the police department can still be investigating.
She believes that as a litigant representing herself she should have had the right to give testimony, present evidence and question JPD. She was not allowed to do so, according to court records.
Schneider said she wants to pursue state legislation making case information more transparent and accessible for the families of Murdered and Missing Indigenous People. She said she is not sure where to start, but her mother’s best friend, Amber Nickerson, who uses the name Amber Batts for writing, has experience with advocacy work in Anchorage. Schneider said she is also considering creating a foundation in her mother’s name to help other families of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.
“It just seems like there is less action when it comes to missing Native people compared to other cases,” Schneider said. “MMIW cases are so easily looked over. I think it would be really beneficial for all Indigenous people to have a law that states if somebody is missing and there’s no technical ongoing investigation, we should be able to request case files. That’s the most important thing for me to make sure this doesn’t happen to other families.”
The Not Invisible Act of 2019 established a cross-jurisdictional advisory committee composed of law enforcement, tribal leaders, federal partners, service providers, family members of missing and murdered individuals and survivors The Savanna’s Act, signed into law in 2020, was a bipartisan effort to improve the federal response and data collection to MMIP, by increasing coordination among federal, state, triibal, and local law enforcement agencies. The Alaska Department of Public Safety and the Anchorage Police Department began publishing new quarterly reports about missing Indigenous people in 2023. DPS has four MMIP investigators in Alaska. Senate Bill 151 was signed into law in 2024 with the goal of reducing the high rates of MMIP.
In 2025, a congressionally mandated report from 2023 addressing cases involving MMIP had been removed from the U.S. Department of Justice website, according to Alaska’s News Source.
Schneider said she is worried about Benjamin Stepetin, an Alaska Native man who went missing in Juneau last summer. She said it’s the police’s job “to protect everybody.” She said because Day is an Alaska Native woman who struggled with addiction and mental health, she feels like she was blamed for her own disappearance. Like Stepetin, Day was experiencing homelessness when she went missing. Schneider said her mother stayed in contact with family regularly.
She said she thinks her mother is gone, but sometimes she wonders if she is alive and being held hostage against her will.
“She would never be away from me like that,” she said. “She was so attached at the hip. Then if she found out I had a kid – oh my God. I would be begging her to go home.”
Schneider’s firstborn son is almost six years old now.
“He always asks, ‘Did your mom die? What happened to her?’ He understands that she’s not here and I try to explain it to him, and it’s like I don’t even understand. We don’t know,” Schneider said. “He’s just confused. It’s just really hard. It’s sad because now he asks questions like, ‘Are you going to disappear?’”
Native American and Alaska Native rates of murder, rape and violent crime are all higher than the national averages, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior Indian Affairs. Data shows that Native American and Alaska Native women make up a significant portion of missing and murdered individuals. In 2023, homicide rates among American Indian and Alaska Native people were nearly five times higher than homicide rates for non-Hispanic White people, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of June 2023, 3.5% of the missing persons included in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) were identified as AI/AN, which was more than three times their percentage in the U.S. population (1.1%), according to a study published by the Library of Congress.
A 2018 report by the Urban Indian Health Institute found that Alaska had the fourth-highest case count of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls of any state. The CDC has reported that murder is the third-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women and that rates of violence on reservations can be up to ten times higher than the national average. However, at the time of the 2018 report, no research had been done on rates of such violence among American Indian and Alaska Native women living in urban areas, even though approximately 71% live there.
Schneider added she was advised to seal her personal information such as her address and phone number in public court records last summer for her personal safety. She said online threats and hateful comments are continuing despite doing so.
Schneider uses social media to raise awareness about Day’s case and has received death threats for years. She said people’s comments challenging her story have included her home address, threats against her son, and strangers have even shown up at her home or followed her to her car.
“Having this happen to my family has really opened my eyes to how soulless people can be,” she said. “It’s sad because I really had more hope for the world. I really thought there was more love.”
Schneider said the threats increase every time she talks about her mother’s case on TikTok, but she still thinks talking about her is worth it because she doesn’t want Day’s name to be forgotten. And she knows there are so many other cases like her mother’s.
“I don’t want people to be over it and move past it,” she said. “I think it’s important to talk about it.”
On the day her mother went missing, Schneider was on a date with her husband. It was their first Valentine’s Day as a married couple. Day went missing shortly after their wedding.
“It’s not very happy anymore,” Schneider said about the holiday. “My husband has done a great job at making it special each year.”
She said her husband gives her flowers and they sometimes spend the day holding memorials, sending off lanterns out the road, or lighting sparklers.
“Sometimes we’ll just get our favorite food and watch one of our favorite movies that I used to watch with my mom when I was little,” Schneider said. “We liked to watch ‘Matilda’ a lot and ‘Cinderella’ was one that I was obsessed with when I was little. But we also liked watching scary movies.”
Schneider said her son knows Valentine’s Day is a happy day of love, but also a sad day of mourning. She said it’s hard because they don’t have a grave to visit or her mother’s ashes.
“I have nothing,” she said.
Schneider said she thinks the hardest part of the loss is not having a place to mourn Day. She said she is afraid of having an empty casket service because it would be expensive and “what if we actually find her?”
She said the places she often visits are the woods, which her mother loved, or the healing totem Kaasei Satú, carved by Wayne Price to increase awareness about sexual and domestic violence against Indigenous people. Schneider said she would like to see a wall of murals memorializing loved ones near the totem. She added she is grateful to gather there with other MMIP families.
“Once we could get the declaration, I would like to have a service for her,” Schneider said. “I think what I would do is make a little treasure box and write letters and find a nice place to bury it.”
Another way to remember Day is in a newly released documentary, “One Nation, Divisible,” which premiered at the Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival in 2025. The film, which also covers other MMIP stories, was produced by Tracey Anarella. The documentary is not yet widely accessible, Schneider said, but she looks forward to watching it soon – along with her favorite movie, “Cinderella.”
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.
