GREYBULL — A morning cup of coffee in Greybull is doing more than helping customers wake up. It’s also helping keep the search for missing people alive.
At Wyld Safe Coffee House, customers may notice something unusual wrapped around their drink: a coffee sleeve featuring the photo of a missing person.
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The effort is part of a growing campaign led by Wyoming-based nonprofit WyoFind, which hopes to generate awareness, spark conversations, and potentially uncover new leads in long-standing missing persons cases.
"It's a way to get it right in their hand," Jalissa Olsen, owner of Wyld Sage said.
The coffee shop serves between 75 and 100 customers daily, meaning dozens of people leave each day carrying information about someone still missing. Another local business, Sun Joy, has also joined the initiative.
"People look at it. They're catchy, they're punchy, they catch your eye," Olsen said.
For Stacy Koester, president of WyoFind, the idea is rooted in both personal experience and a familiar awareness campaign from decades past.
"I have my own experience with a missing family member," Koester said. "So I know the importance of keeping things in headlines and keeping cases from going cold."
Growing up, Koester remembers seeing photos of missing children on milk cartons. The coffee sleeve campaign is her modern-day version of that concept.
"We transition that into kind of the modern-day face on the milk carton, face on a coffee sleeve," she said.
The goal of the campaign is simple: keep missing persons cases in the public eye.
"This is kind of to work on the cold cases in Wyoming, to bring some of those back into the headlines, bring them back into light and start being able to find answers for families that have waited far too long," Koester said.
And in some cases, awareness can lead to breakthroughs.
Koester said one of the cases featured on the sleeves involves Virginia, Richard, and Reagan Uden. Through ongoing outreach and investigation, she was able to establish communication with the man convicted in their murders.
"Over time, he started opening up to me, giving me information of where the bodies are," Koester said.
While major developments can happen, she emphasized that even seemingly insignificant information can make a difference.
"One little piece of information that somebody once thought was unimportant could be the key to solve a case," she said.
For customers, the sleeves often become conversation starters. For families of missing loved ones, they serve as a reminder that people continue to care and continue to search.
"It's sort of a cool way to be a voice for people who are voiceless," Olsen said. "They matter."
For families waiting for answers, that visibility can mean hope. And for the public, something as routine as buying a cup of coffee could help bring a missing person's story back into the spotlight.
