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(NewsNation) — A 47-year-old woman left her California apartment in January, never to be seen or heard from again. Now, her friends from across the country are asking: What happened to Julie Vessigault?
Julie Vessigault, airshow enthusiast
Vessigault is an avid aviation enthusiast who spent decades traveling across the country, going from airshow to airshow.
“Every day, if she could get into an airplane, she was happy,” said friend Donna Graves. “And if she could clean an airplane, she was happy.”
It’s a love Vessigault inherited, said her sister Melanie Worden.
“She took after my dad. My dad was a huge airplane fanatic,” Worden said. “We’d go out and listen for airplanes and then use the binoculars to find the airplanes, and he knew exactly what type of airplane it was by the sound it made.”
Last fall, Vessigault took time to visit her parents, according to her friend Brooke Sorenson.
“She made her way to California where her parents were living, and very quickly, her dad passed away within a couple of days,” Sorenson said. “That was the first opportunity that she saw — maybe I could stay here and take care of my mom.”
But Graves said Vessigault’s friends knew she was having some struggles.
“We knew behind the scenes that she was having a hard time getting a job,” Graves said, “She was trying to become her mother’s caretaker, and that probably wasn’t going as well as she was hoping.”
Julie Vessigault disappears
On Jan. 23, 2024, Vessigault made an appointment with the Department of Motor Vehicles, but she missed it.
“What we were told was that she got back to the apartment and rearranged a few things, left some things behind, got in her car and left,” Sorenson said.
Among the things Vessigault left behind were her phone and license as she drove off in her Toyota Camry. Her friends say there was every indication she planned to come back.
The Elk Grove Police Department posted a photo of her car, which was spotted on a surveillance camera driving through town.
Nobody has seen or heard from Vessigault since.
“We’ve had people scouring every single parking lot they could possibly think of, especially the mental health hospitals (and) Walmart shopping centers because she was known to sleep in her car quite a bit when she was on the road,” Worden said.
It was behavior that sometimes worried her friends.
“She slept in her car many nights,” Graves said. “It was odd. We always thought she was in danger [then], and she gets to a home with an apartment, and all of a sudden, that’s the time she goes missing.”
Friends worried there may have been a trigger that caused Vessigault to take a little time away by herself. The day she disappeared was around the fourth anniversary of the tragic death of her friend’s son, Nathan, who died in a plane crash.
The two were very close.
“He called her ‘Aunt Julie Poppins,'” Sorenson said. “We kind of named her that because Julie was the kind of person who could pull something out of nowhere and surprise everybody.”
Vessigault was known to take some time away, but her friends and family said she always let someone know.
“What leads me to think that this is different is that any time she’s needed space, she’s always put out the warning signs,” Sorenson said. “I need a hug; life is really hard; she would start reaching out more. None of the signs of when she’s ever needed that were lining up with what she was posting.”
Searching for Julie Vessigault
The 2024 Sun and Fun Air Show in Lakeland, Florida, was emptier without Vessigault.
“The pilots were always so accommodating. She’s been in way more airplanes than I’ve ever flown in,” Graves said.
Her friends made T-shirts to get the word out about Vessigault’s disappearance and plan on distributing them at future airshows. One friend also made a musical arrangement of two songs Vessigault loved.
“Some people came to talk to me, they’re like, she’s a legend. She’s one of the people that, any time an airshow came through, people wanted her autograph, people wanted pictures with her. It was like crazy to me,” Worden said.
The aviation community wants to find Vessigault and find out what caused her to vanish.
“We need her. We need her in our community,” Graves said. “It’s a big piece missing right now, and if we can just find a way to get more information out there, maybe we’ll get answers.”
Vessigualt is 5’1″ and about 140 pounds and was last seen in jeans and a grey T-shirt. Anyone with information should call Elk Grove police at 916-478-8299.