The mother of Jesse Galganov, the 22-year-old Montreal man who disappeared while on a hiking vacation in Peru last fall, is vowing to keep searching as long as needed to bring her son home.
Alisa Clamen returned from Peru last weekend, where she oversaw the complicated search efforts which are now into their fifth month.
The reward money has been increased from $10,000 to $30,000, in the hopes of inducing someone who knows something to go forward to authorities, she met with government officials and police officials, and she even bought advertising in various media outlets in and around the mountain town of Huaraz, where Jesse was last seen on Sept. 28.
"I did a lot of local media, to try to spread the word," Clamen told CJAD 800's Aaron Rand on Tuesday, "because these areas are not very urban, so we did local radio and newspapers and TV."
Clamen has also hired a renowned Israeli private investigation firm, Magnus, to conduct searches in the remote mountains, where it's believed Jesse disappeared.
"It's a different place, it's not Canada, it's Peru," she says. 'It's not the same kind of police environment, the police aren't, I find, as diligent or as motivated, they have to be pushed along. The teams that we've hired are the ones that are doing all of the investigation work, but they're not able to do things like interrogate interested parties."
Clamen says investigators from Magnus had done extensive work on social media in their attempts to find people who may have come in contact with Jesse. At the moment, they're looking for a group of four American men who were in the area around the time Jesse disappeared. Local investigators also suggest two French men had camped with Galganov on the night of Sept. 30, but so far, no one has yet been able to crack the mystery.
Clamen says she'll return to Peru if she needs to. In the meantime, Magnus hasn't stopped its search efforts, with another round, referred to as Phase Six, set to begin this week.
"There's no way we're going to stop this," she says. "And we're going to find Jesse, no matter what the result is. I'm going to bring my son home."
Click here to visit Help Us Find Jesse, a Facebook page devoted to search efforts, and here for a GoFundMe page devoted to raising funds for the search.