Louisville mom who volunteered for Missing in America is still missing

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - She's helped in the search for missing people in the Louisville area and beyond, but a local mother of two has now disappeared.

WAVE 3 News shared her photo on our Facebook page this week. Now, 10 days missing, Louisville Metro Police have an open case to help find 37-year-old Andrea Knabel, but it’s the organization she’s worked with for several years, Missing in America, that seems to be most concerned that she hasn’t returned home.

While thousands of people vanish in the U.S. every day, the people who know Andrea Knabel say this case is particularly worrisome.

“She is an amazing person and she’s a great mom,” said her longtime friend, Maricia Kidd.

Friend and Louisville Missing in America search volunteer Lacreis Kidd (no relation to Maricia) said, “She’s a beautiful person, very personable.”

Added private investigator and friend Tracy Leonard: “Here she is helping to locate people and she comes up missing herself.”

Leonard told WAVE 3 News that Knabel was last seen between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. on Aug. 13, leaving a relative’s home on foot in the 4000 block Fincastle Road in Audubon Park.

“She’s just a super great girl,” Leonard said. “She helped me locate a missing teen about a year and a half ago.”

Leonard said Knabel has helped him in several searches for missing adults and children. Maricia Kidd, who’s known Knabel for 30 years, said Knabel had a recent round of bad luck which included being laid off from her job and her car getting totaled in a hit and run. Knabel used her phone minutes after leaving the house the morning of her disappearance, but hasn’t been heard from since. Friends also said she was too trusting.

“She was upset and she needed a ride,” Maricia Kidd said. “Obviously she was trying to get ahold of people, maybe she got in the car with the wrong person.”

Lacreis Kidd said she met Knabel several years ago.

“My daughter went missing back in 2016, she was a student at Columbia University,” Lacreis Kidd said, adding that after she found her daugther, she began volunteering for Missing in America, where she met Knabel.

“It’s just unreal that she would, in turn, go missing given all the work that she had done for the community.” Reports of a Lyft driver in the area when Knabel disappeared didn’t pan out. Some of the national Missing in America representatives are headed to Louisville to help look for her. Knabel is 5 feet 7 inches tall and weights around 190 pounds.

Friends ask the public to continue to share her photo in the hope someone spots her.

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