A set of 25 purple billboards may catch your eye along Highway 41 between Milwaukee and northeast Wisconsin.
They're part of Missing Persons' Awareness Month, recently proclaimed by Governor Scott Walker for the second year.
Marsha Loritz was the inspiration behind naming April for this cause, after writing to the governor. Loritz's mother, Victoria Prokopovitz disappeared almost three years ago.
Now she's transformed her efforts into looking for more than her mother but also helping all the families who also have a loved one missing and know what she is going through.
After looking into a billboard for her mother, it soon rolled into a bigger cause. Now not only is Victoria Prokopovitz's name on the billboards, but 25 names each week of different missing people.
Currently, there are at least 129 missing persons in Wisconsin according to the National Missing Persons and Unidentified Persons System database. Loritz hopes these billboards will be seen by someone who could help a family looking for a loved one.
Some of the people missing have been gone for years, even decades. People Loritz says shouldn't be forgotten.
Lamar Advertising has partnered with Loritz by donating all 25 billboards this year as a trial run. She is already fundraising for next year. You can help her cause by donating to her "Find Wisconsin's Missing Billboard Fund" here. Next year she hopes to add photos to the boards.
The 25 billboards placed throughout Wisconsin will have an estimated viewership of 20 million by the end of the month.
Within those millions of views, hopefully at least one family's story will be have an impact and they can find some answers and maybe finally, closure.
