Neighbours gathered for a candlelight vigil and potluck Saturday night to honour Sherry Shelley, the 65-year-old Nanaimo woman whose disappearance police are treating as highly suspicious.
About a dozen residents from Shelley’s Chapel Street apartment building lit candles around the front garden she created, shared food and memories and voiced hopes for her safe return.
“It’s devastating,” said Rick Sizer, a neighbour who helped organize the gathering. “She’s here every day, all night, all throughout the morning, always doing something in this garden, asking us…whether to walk our dogs, whether to help clean our house, anything.”
Nanaimo RCMP are investigating the suspicious disappearance of 65-year-old Sherry Shelley, last seen Nov. 13. (Submitted/Nanaimo RCMP)
Another neighbour, Pat Braun, described Shelley as a fast friend who loved beachcombing and rock collecting.
“I’m worried sick,” she said. “I hope that wherever she is, that they let her come home soon, if somebody has taken her, I don’t want to think anything worse than that, you know, I’m hopeful.”
Residents said the garden outside the building felt like the right place to gather.
“All these logs that you see on the garden are all from what she has collected, all the rocks, all the sea glass, all the seashells,” one neighbour told CHEK News. “The whole front of the building is Sherry. So, yeah, so it’s really important that we just light up her presence even more.”
Nanaimo RCMP say Shelley was last heard from on Nov. 13 and that the case is being investigated by the Serious Crime Unit.
Investigators believe she may have been in the area between the Walmart in north Nanaimo and the Old Logging Road off Ware Road in Lantzville overnight Nov. 13-14. She is associated with a white 2013 Volkswagen Tiguan.
Anyone with information about Sherry Shelley is asked to call Nanaimo RCMP at 250-754-2345.