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ST. GEORGE — A St. George family has new hope of finding their son following some recent potential sightings.
Tracey Smith said over the past couple of weeks, three people reported spotting her son, 18-year-old Macin, in the Sacramento, California, area.
“One of the ladies talked to who she considered a homeless teenager and had a great experience with him,” Tracey Smith said. “And then it was a few days later she saw that this teenager, ‘Macin,’ was missing because somebody had posted it in her Facebook feed.”
Macin Smith was last seen Sept. 1, 2015, in St. George.
His family believed he had boarded a bus to Desert Hills High School, but he never made it onto the bus.
His father had confiscated his cellphone and laptop during an argument the night before, and nobody has located Macin since.
The family has spent the past year-and-a-half searching for the teen, and the “Help Find Macin Smith” Facebook page now has over 25,000 members.
Still, all previous sightings have come up empty for Macin’s parents.
“It gets to be a roller-coaster ride where there’s such high hopes and then there’s such disappointments,” Tracey Smith said. “I’m cautiously moving forward, but we’ve had many, many sightings over the past few months and they’ve turned out to be somebody else’s child.”
Smith said she had volunteers ready to put up fliers in the Sacramento area, as well as people who were willing to go out and look for him.
She also said it was possible a nonprofit group may distribute lunches accompanied by fliers to the homeless, in hopes of having more eyes watching for Macin.
Please be on the lookout for this missing young man from Utah. His family believes he is in Sacramento. Share & RT @SacPolice@metrofirepiopic.twitter.com/JiQ8sfgCPj
— Sacramento Fire (@SacFirePIO) January 4, 2017
The Sacramento Fire Department recently issued a tweet about Macin that led to some local news coverage.
“We just want to know whether he’s alive or not — that’s it — and if he needs anything, we’re here to support him,” Tracey Smith said. “I would just tell him how much I love him and my life has been incomplete without Macin. And I would love the opportunity to renew that relationship and let him know how much he’s missed.”
