It's a cold and cloudy winter afternoon in San Luis Obispo, and I'm retracing missing Cal poly student Kristen Smart's last known step steps in May of 1996 from a house just off campus to the entrance of her red brick dorm building on perimeter Road.
Seagulls are screaming overhead as I pass a huge, modern looking rec center with students on the second story looking down at me through floor to ceiling glass windows while they run on treadmills.
Other students walk by me, having loud conversations on their cell phones.
Maybe I'm just self conscious, but it feels like some of them are looking at me suspiciously.
I'm dressed pretty modestly and wearing a hat and a backpack, so I'm not sure what exactly they're picking up on, but maybe I'm giving off some sort of vibration that says I don't belong here.
At 1.2, girls pass me and I clearly hear one say to the other, that guy did not look our age.
So much for self esteem.
I cross a bright green crosswalk, and on my right are a series of red buildings with California themed names in brass on their sides.
Sequoia, Santa LuCia, Fremont the full walk only takes me about eleven minutes, and by the end of it I'm surprised to see that the distance between the last place she was seen alive and the door to her dorm building at Muir hall is just about 40 yards.
It's in these 40 yards that Kristen Smart disappeared over 23 years ago, and the case is still unsolved.
There are currently more than a half million people missing in the United States.
A staggering 50,000 are added to the list every month, but the vast majority of them are quickly found and removed, teenage runaways angry with their parents, or people who just wanted to be left alone for a while.
Still, 650,000 have never been found, dead or alive.
It's a heartbreaking statistic, but one that most of us are not really equipped to do much with.
The majority of these cases, I'll never even hear about.
A few of them I'll probably become aware of from the news or a headline I scroll bye.
But since I'm not an investigator, there's really not much help I can provide.
It's a little different if you have access to some of the people and places involved.
It's different when someone goes missing in your own backyard.
Growing up on the California Central coast is probably pretty much like growing up anywhere else.