CLEVELAND — Bill Hodge thinks about his brother Mike all the time.
“I do hold out hope,” said Hodge.
Michael Hodge vanished nearly 20 years ago.
“I drive down the street, you know, look at someone twice, thinking that might be my brother. The not knowing part is the hardest, not knowing what happened to him,” said Bill.
The then 39-year-old disappeared from the West 172nd Street and Puritas Avenue area on March 6, 2004. A lot of things have changed for the Hodge family since that day, including the death of his mother.
“Every year, my mom would buy Christmas presents for my brother Mike and put them in the closet upstairs in his room, thinking that maybe someday,” explained Hodge.
But the one constant that remains is that Michael Hodge is still missing.
Now Cleveland Missing is using a new way to put the spotlight on missing persons cases. They’re using decks of playing cards, and Michael Hodge is featured on one of the cards, the 6 of Hearts.
Each card has a name, picture, and information about a missing person.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Bill.
Sylvia Colon is the co-founder of Cleveland Missing. The non-profit was created to help families of those who are missing.
“We have 52 cold cases in Northeast Ohio that we were able to put on a deck of cards, and we’re in the process right now of giving them to the jails and prisons in Ohio in hopes that we can solve at least one missing person case,” explained Sylvia Colon.
The idea came from Florida, where law enforcement featured names and faces of murder victims in hopes of getting tips that lead to arrests.
”These cards actually do help solve some cases, so it is our hope that out of the 52, at least one, just one, would be a major success,” said Colon.
The organization got a grant to help pay for the first batch of cards. They plan to raise money so they can do more decks of cards with different pictures of missing people.
Anyone with information about a missing person should contact the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation at 1-855-BCI-OHIO
