Kevin Kelly/Key photo Donna and Don Ross hold the Archbishop O'Hara High School senior class pictures of their sons Jesse, left, and Andy. Jesse vanished from a Chicago hotel on Nov. 21 while attending a university model United Nations conference.

He promised to call again the next day when he and the 13 University of Missouri-Kansas City students and their faculty sponsor had loaded the vans for the return drive home.

He was that kind of son, said Donna Ross. He always let his mother know where he was, what he was doing, and when to expect him home. He couldn't keep a secret, not from his mother.

There was an "emergency" meeting of the mock U.N. at 2 a.m. Nov. 21, the final day of the conference that drew more than 1,000 university students from across the country. Before the mock emergency, there was a dance, and parties throughout the host Four Points Sheraton Hotel in Chicago's downtown loop.

At about 2:30 a.m., about 12 hours after his last cell phone call to his mother, Jesse Ross got up from his chair and walked out of the room for a 30-minute break. A surveillance camera in the hotel lobby caught the unmistakable image of the red-haired Jesse, clad in a white T-shirt, jeans, and a green warm-up jacket, walking toward the main doors.

It was the last trace ever of 19-year-old Jesse Ross.

The 10-minute walk back to Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers, where Jesse and the UMKC group was staying, was well-lit, heavily traveled and covered by outdoor security cameras. None of them recorded Jesse.

"Aliens took him away," said his mother, knowing full well how ridiculous that sounds. But it's no more ridiculous than any other reason offered for her son's disappearance.

Chicago police have found no evidence that he was a victim of foul play. There has been no activity on Jesse's credit cards or his cell phone since he disappeared into the Chicago night.

There was no way imaginable to any one who knew him that Jesse could have committed suicide, or wanted to walked away from the life he was living, said Don Ross, his father.

Jesse had just gotten a promotion from unpaid intern to paid morning on-air personality at Kansas City radio station 95.7 FM - "The Vibe" - a dream job for a sophomore communications major.

"They decided he needed an on-air name, so they named him Opie Cunningham," after Ron Howard's TV characters, Opie Taylor and Richie Cunningham, said Don.

A parent's worst nightmare is supposed to be the death of a child.

There is a worse nightmare than that, said Don and Donna Ross.

"We pray for a sign, anything," Donna said. "We pray, 'If he is in heaven with you, that's not my first choice, but God, please give us a sign. Send me an e-mail, a phone call, something. We have to know that he's OK and with you.'

"When you lose someone you love when they pass on, you grieve and then you move on with your life," Donna said. "We are nowhere. We are still stuck in that revolving door. We know nothing more than we knew that first day."

As the months roll on, Don and Donna Ross can't give up hope.

"If Jesse ever thought we'd give up on him, we'd catch hell from him. 'How could you just give up on me?' he would tell us," Donna said.

* * *

Deacon Ken Albers was an adult leader of Pack 30 at St. John Francis Regis Parish when he first met Jesse and his older brother, Andy, as Cub Scouts.

Andy was focused, determined and quiet, eventually earning the Boy Scout's highest rant, Eagle Scout. Jesse never made it beyond the Second Class rank.

"That was Jesse. He just enjoyed being around the other guys," Deacon Albers said. "Jesse would enter a room and five minutes later the entire room was upside down."

Jesse would choose Deacon Albers as his Confirmation sponsor. When Don Ross, after years of encouragement from his sons and wife, finally entered full communion with the Catholic Church in 2000, Deacon Albers served as his sponsor as well.

Regularly, Deacon Ken and Cathy Albers will pick up a meal and take it to the Ross' home in Belton, and just be with them. On Aug. 29, over Papa Murphy's pizza, the two couples sat around the Ross' kitchen table and kept Jesse alive with their stories.

Life was a smorgasbord to Jesse, and he had to taste everything, his parents said.

"Half my job was slowing Jesse down," Don said. "He was always a mile-a-minute guy. He would never join one group because that would tie him down to one thing. He was always on the fringes of a lot of things. We had to back him off some things. We'd tell him, 'There is only so much you can do, Jesse.' But he just wanted to fly."

He was also fearless, Don said. He recalled taking the small Jesse to a science fiction convention to see James Doohan, the actor who portrayed Scotty on the TV and movie series "Star Trek."

Anxious to ask a question, the small, red-headed boy stood on a chair and waved his arms. Doohan couldn't help but notice, and invited Jesse on stage.

"Then he asked him some technical question about how they did something or other, and Scotty had no idea," Don said.

Jesse, bright but indifferent to homework, was a wheeler-dealer who learned very early how to charm his teachers at St. Regis.

"Jesse would go through the school year, then he'd sit down at the end of the year and negotiate his grades with his teachers," Don said.

That method didn't work well at Archbishop O'Hara High School, his father said. But his grades were solid as he competed on the cross country and track teams.

"His grades weren't bad - B's and C's," Don said.

"He should have made A's," his mother quickly added. "Every now and then he would surprise us with an A."

His senior class project was pure Jesse. With a passion for music and a huge network of friends, Jesse coaxed several Kansas City area bands into donating their services for a one-night fund-raiser at the Cup & Saucer, a City Market-area restaurant and club.

Charging $5 admission, Jesse raised more than $600 in one night for the Holy Family Catholic Worker House, where he had spent several evenings in Scout and school service work, helping to serve meals to the poor, the working poor and the homeless.

"He had networks going all over the city," Don said. "Nothing ever phased him."

* * *

Every Sunday when Don's job as an AT&T computer specialist doesn't force him to work, he and Donna attend Mass at St. Regis Parish. Though they moved to Belton a few years ago, they never left the parish.

Their faith and their marriage sustain them, they said.

Every Sunday since Nov. 21, the St. Regis congregation offers a petition for Jesse Ross. Every Sunday when Don and Donna join them in that petition and at the sacrifice of Mass, it deepens the experience for the entire congregation, Deacon Albers said.

But it isn't easy.

"I have my issues with God," Donna admitted. "I even talked to Father Tom (Holder, St. Regis pastor) about it. He told me, 'You should have issues, and you need to tell God about it."

When she is feeling angry, she lets God have it.

"If you don't have your faith, you don't have anything," Donna said. "We're devastated. But if you don't have God, who is going to help you make it through the day?"

"One thing that sticks in my mind," Don said, "is Jesus standing before Pontius Pilate and telling him, 'My kingdom is not of this world.' Every one of us is going to say good-bye to loved ones. I would like to meet the guy who has been here 1,000 years."

Don remembered teaching Jesse his bedtime prayers: "Now I lay me down to sleep . . . If I should die before I wake."

"He'd look at me and say, 'I don't want to die,'" Don said. "I would talk to him about that. I would tell him, 'All these neat people who have left, like Grandpa Howard, when they left this world, they went down a path.' I'd tell him, 'I want you to go down that same path, and we'll all be together.'"

Faith makes hope possible, Donna said.

"You have to have hope," she said.

Faith also makes love possible.

"Don't leave things undone, the hugs and the kisses," Donna said. "We've had that relationship with both our boys. Jesse knew. Every time before he'd leave the house, he'd say, 'I'm leaving, Mom.' He knew that I would give him a hug and a kiss and say, 'Stay safe. Make good decisions.'

"Something this hard faces everybody, and you never know when. This pulled the floor from under us. He went off to a college-sponsored, government-sponsored event in Chicago for a few days, and he didn't come back," she said.

They have God, and they have each other.

"The hardest part for me is leaving for work in the morning," Don said. "I am strongest when I am here, with her."

"When one of us is down," Donna said, "one of us is up."

* * *

To both their surprise and their horror, the Rosses learned that they are not alone. There is a national network of parents whose adolescent and young adult children have suddenly disappeared, leaving no trace. They number in the thousands.

Among them is Kelly Jolkowski, an Omaha, Neb., mother whose then-19-year-old son, Jason, vanished on the morning of June 13, 2001, somewhere between their home and Benson High School, eight blocks away, where he was walking to meet a co-worker for a ride to work.

Kelly Jolkowski has launched Project Jason, a national support group for the families of missing adults.

Project Jason has helped publicize Jesse Ross's disappearance nationwide. Through Kelly's connections, Jesse's picture has been placed on the backs of semi-tractor trailer trucks crisscrossing the nation, and his story has been told in a variety of publications.

"They have so many resources," Don said. "Project Jason is trying to get the same procedures throughout law enforcement. When the police end up with a John Doe corpse that they can't identify, they want them to take DNA and put it in a data base. Then they can take my DNA and Donna's DNA and put it on the data base and compare it. Right now, if they have a body they can't identify, they bury it in an unmarked, common grave and no one knows about it."

From seemingly all directions, friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers have offered to help.

Jesse was featured in a brief segment in January on "America's Most Wanted," a Fox television network program hosted by John Walsh, himself a parent of a kidnapped and murdered son.

Jesse's Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity at UMKC sponsored a "Where's Opie?" rally three weeks after Jesse's disappearance, to raise money for a reward and an awareness campaign. 95.7 "The Vibe" also held an "Opie Fest" in May, featuring many of the local bands that Jesse talked into performing for his O'Hara High School senior project.

Teachers at Hickman Mills' C.A. Burke Elementary School, where Donna works as a secretary, took up a collection for the reward fund. Employees of AT&T from as far away as Texas also contributed. Walgreen's, where Jesse's brother Andy works, gave $2,000. Archbishop O'Hara High School held a fundraiser.

Through donations, the Ross family was able to offer a $10,000 reward fund, plus purchase two billboards, 14 feet high and 48 feet wide with Jesse's picture, reward information and Chicago Police contact information, on two major Chicago freeways.

"We're not alone at all," Donna said.

Jesse's disappearance eerily mirrored the December 2005, disappearance of 31-year-old Matthew Soumakis, who had vanished from the same downtown Chicago hotel where Jesse was staying. Two weeks after Soumakis' disappearance, his body was found in the Chicago River, which runs just behind the Sheraton Chicago Hotel & Towers.

Using dogs, divers and sonar, police scoured the Chicago River but couldn't find Jesse.

* * *

Donna Ross can imagine a scenario in which her son knocks on their Belton front door.

"He'd say, 'Hi, Mom. I met this guy in Chicago who was from Japan. And he told me about this great idea he had. So I've been in Japan all this time,'" she said, smiling.

"It would be some sort of pie-in-the-sky thing like that," Donna said.

"Even if he showed up at our door with a wife and four kids," Don said, "We'd say, 'Welcome home, son.'"

They both know that Jesse would never leave like that, not without talking it over with his father and staying in touch with his mother, almost daily.

"He and I were close," Don said, "but there was a bond between Jesse and his mother."

One of Jesse's best friends at Archbishop O'Hara was Mike Davis. Not long after Davis' older brother Mark was killed in an automobile accident, Jesse brought home a bouquet of flowers from a supermarket.

"He said, 'I needed to do this, Mom,' and he gave me a hug," Donna said.

"On the outside, there was a lot of laughing and joking around," she said. "But inside, Jesse had a big heart."

Don said that carrying the memories of his missing son has taught him to appreciate life.

Recently, Don's mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

"You hear of these people who learn that they have a fatal disease, and all of a sudden, they're eyes are opened. They finally realize what is really important," Don said.

"When I was visiting my mother in her hospice room, I looked out the window, and the trees were blowing back and forth in the wind. I just sat there, looking at that," he said.

"We take so much for granted," Don said. "That's why I want to retire. I want to appreciate things like the wind in the trees a little more. I don't want to let life move too fast."

Don was a bit late for dinner with the Deacon Ken and Cathy Albers on Aug. 21. Andy had called from work and said he left his wallet at home. Don drove from Belton to Independence to help his son.

"Before all this, I might have at least said something to him," Don said. "Not anymore."

Anyone with any information concerning the disappearance or location of Jesse Ross is urged to call the Chicago Police Department at (312) 744-8266.

END