Jordan Simeon- North Dakota/Arkansas- 2022

(Above: Jordan and his tattoos. photo credits: nbcnews.com)

From nbcnews.com:

It’s been just over two weeks since 25-year-old Jordan Simeon got into his green 2014 Kia Soul in Fargo, North Dakota, headed for New Orleans, Louisiana. He set out on Saturday, March 5, and by Sunday, March 6, Jordan was driving down Interstate 40 in Arkansas.

And then his car broke down. “He wanted to start over, start fresh in New Orleans,” Jordan’s grandmother, Linda Simeon, told Dateline. “There was contact from him -- up until his car broke down on the interstate in North Little Rock.”

Jordan was planning on meeting up with his friend Adonia Daigle in New Orleans. Adonia moved to New Orleans in 2020 from North Dakota, where she originally met Jordan. She planned on helping Jordan get settled when he arrived. “He has always kind of affectionately referred to me as ‘Mom,’” Adonia told Dateline, “because I am a bit older than him and I am a bit motherly when it comes to, you know, to him.”

Adonia said that she had talked to Jordan several times about moving to New Orleans. “I spoke to him on the Friday before he went missing and he had mentioned coming down here again and, and I said, ‘Well, you know, like, let's -- let's not be spontaneous about this.’” Adonia said she cautioned her friend about the move, saying “running away is never the answer,” and “your problems are going to follow you,” but in the end, Adonia said she told Jordan they would figure it all out together.

Adonia said that she spoke with Jordan on Saturday before he headed out, and again on Sunday morning while he was on the road. She said there was a gap in the middle of the day where they didn’t speak for a few hours, until around 4:30 p.m. when he told her that he was broken down on the side of the road.

“From that point,” Jordan’s grandmother, Linda, said, “nothing's been heard of -- or anything since then.”

She described her grandson as very caring. “He used to work at the homeless shelter in Fargo. He was always very compassionate,” Linda told Dateline. “He had worked there I think over a year and really enjoyed it.” He no longer worked there when he left Fargo for New Orleans.

Jordan is also very shy, according to his grandmother. “He liked music, he liked art, he liked Xbox, you know, video games,” Linda said. “He liked hanging with his few close friends that he had. Jordan was always kind of a shy person. He didn't really like to be alone.”

Dateline spoke with Jordan’s older sister, Jayla Simeon, who also lives in North Dakota. “Being Jordan's big sister has been -- I've always tried to do my best to be there and protect him and take care of him,” Jayla said. “Jordan is a good person with a kind heart who tries to do that -- has always tried to do that for me in return, as well.”

Jayla told Dateline that she had dinner with Jordan a few weeks prior to his road trip. She mentioned that he was having a hard time and said he wanted to relocate, especially after a friend of his told him that she could no longer move in with Jordan and be his roommate. “Jordan didn't want to live here forever,” Jayla said. “He actually didn't, you know, tell me before he left because I think it was an impulsive sort of decision -- something he'd been thinking about for a long time, but then when his friend said she could not move in with him any longer, I think that really pushed him to, ‘Well, I'm just going to go then,’ and packed up his whole car.”

Jayla said she wasn’t surprised by this, because she knows her little brother didn’t like to be alone.

The siblings have dealt with a lot of loss in their lives. Jayla and Linda both told Dateline that Jordan had been struggling recently. “He has the Huntington's gene -- for Huntington's disease. And symptoms of Huntington's were starting to show up,” Linda said. Jayla and Jordan’s mother, Starla, died from Huntington’s disease, as did their aunt. Jayla told Dateline that their mother died at the age of 44 – Jayla was only 19, and Jordan would have been 16 or 17 years old. “We didn’t get to know who she was genuinely,” Jayla said, “just who she was with this disease.”

“It's a brutal disease. It usually starts to hit people in about their 40s,” Linda told Dateline. “It's kind of like a combination of Lou Gehrig’s, Parkinson's, and Alzheimer's all in one. There is no cure, there is no treatment.”

Jordan’s friend, Adonia, told Dateline that she worked in healthcare and was going to get Jordan set up with some doctors nearby. “Working in healthcare most of my life, I've known about his disease and his disease progress,” Adonia said. “I wanted to help him along his journey.”

Linda thinks her grandson was scared, especially after watching his mother struggle with Huntington’s disease, and is extremely worried about his well-being. “We had texted back and forth -- I think it was Friday the 4th, maybe, or -- or the 5th,” Linda said. “And then he went missing on the 6th.”

Linda said they believe the last communication from Jordan was on Facetime with a friend who said that Jordan told them his car had broken down, that he’d called roadside assistance for his car and that the tow truck had arrived. Jordan’s friend Adonia doesn’t believe a tow truck ever arrived.

She told Dateline she had advised Jordan to get some rest that Sunday night and sent him some money on Venmo and bought him a motel room for the night. She told him to get on a bus in North Little Rock first thing the next morning to head down to New Orleans and that together they could go back up to Arkansas to collect his belongings and car.

Adonia said she called the Arkansas State Police on Sunday night because Jordan never checked into the hotel. She requested they do a welfare check on the vehicle to see if Jordan was still with the car. “When I got a phone call back that night, they said he was not with the vehicle. And so I called the hotel again, I think around 11 p.m., and he hadn't checked in yet,” Adonia said. “So I went to bed and I called right away again in the morning and he hadn't checked in.”

Adonia said she called to report Jordan missing immediately after that on Monday morning, March 7. She also reached out to Jordan’s family that morning to let them know that she had lost contact with Jordan the night before.

Since they were unsure of exactly where Jordan disappeared, Linda told Dateline they had a lot of trouble getting support in Arkansas. “We couldn't get him listed down there as a missing person,” she said, because there were jurisdictional issues. So Jordan was reported missing in North Dakota -- even though he was last known to be somewhere in Arkansas.

Linda said she and her husband drove from their home in Missouri to Arkansas to try in person to get attention from authorities there. “My husband and I went down there and were able to convince the sheriff's department to take on the case,” Linda said. “So right now there’s two departments taking it on -- both Fargo, North Dakota, and the Sheriff's department in Little Rock.”

It has now been just over two weeks since Jordan vanished.

“They had an officer in Benton, Arkansas, go to the bus stop there which is the Pilot gas station, and look at the footage -- the video footage from the gas station -- to see if he got off that bus,” Linda told Dateline. Benton would have been the first stop if Jordan had gotten on the bus in North Little Rock. The officer identified a man as Jordan, but the family said they haven’t been able to see the footage.

And Jordan never showed up in New Orleans. The video footage from the Benton gas station was sent to the Fargo Police for review, and “it was not him,” Linda said. “One of the detectives knows Jordan from helping or working with him in the past and it was not him.”

Linda told Dateline that on Thursday, March 10, she called Greyhound, the bus company. “After about two and a half hours on the phone, I finally got through to a supervisor who told me that the ticket was never claimed,” Linda said, her frustration evident. “That's after almost a week. And I feel the family did all the investigating,” Linda said. “We've had no help at all until we went down and sat at the sheriff's office down there and they finally we found someone to help us.”

Linda said Detective Braxton from the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office was assigned to the case and she has been very grateful for his help. However, she added, “After two weeks, we don't know a single thing. They haven't been able to verify anything with phone records. They haven't been able to verify anything with bank records. We can't even verify if he took the money out of his Venmo account,” Linda said. “So we have nothing. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

“The Pulaski Sheriff's Department has been very nice and very willing to help in Arkansas,” Jayla said regarding her brother’s case. But she did add that “it was really hard to get, sort of, like, the ball rolling or people to take things seriously.”

According to Linda, Jordan’s 2014 green Kia Soul, with a personalized North Dakota license plate that read ALIEN, sat on I-40, between the White Oak exit and the interchange to 430 near Little Rock until she arranged for it to be towed by the nearest repair shop where she later picked it up.

She told Dateline that when she talked to the tow truck driver, he told her that when he towed Jordan’s car, the keys were sitting on top of the vehicle. “All of his valuables were in there, as far as, like, an expensive Xbox and a laptop,” Linda said. “So you’d think that somebody would have noticed the keys on top?”

Adonia told Dateline that an irreplaceable keepsake was also found in the car: a wooden box that had belonged to Jordan’s mother.

Linda said that Jordan’s car was in fairly good condition when they picked it up. They did notice, however, that the catalytic converter had been cut off of the car. “We were able to confirm he had an oil change before he left Fargo, and I talked to the manager there that remembered him and he said, ‘No. I'd have remembered if -- if it was loud like that,’” Linda said.

While they were in Arkansas, Linda said they began searching for Jordan on their own. “I think we were a little off on our first search,” Linda said, but the detective who took on the case got the exact location where the car was towed from and they went to search that area. “Both the interstate itself and the woods behind it,” Linda told Dateline. “And never saw a single thing.”

Linda said there have also been groups volunteering their time to help search for Jordan by flying drones over the interstate, riding ATVs in the surrounding area, and bringing in a dog team.

But so far, nothing has been found. “So two weeks later, we still have a missing person,” Linda said.

Linda hopes that someone will come forward with information about her grandson. “I just don't know how someone couldn't have seen something. The interstate in that area is very busy,” Linda said. “I just can't believe that someone didn't either try to stop, or --. It just is such a mystery.”

She feels, with exposure, the mystery can be solved. “We're just having trouble getting the word out,” Linda said. “So we're real hopeful if we can get the information out farther than Fargo, North Dakota, that somebody would recognize him. Just those tattoos alone. People remember that.”

Jordan has two very distinct tattoos. One is on his left inner forearm. It has two purple orchids and his mother’s name, Starla. The other is a hummingbird on the side of his neck, which according to Jayla, is in honor of their grandmother Linda. He has brown hair, although he has dyed it before. He has brown eyes, wears glasses, is 5’11”, and weighs around 200 lbs.

Dateline reached out to the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office and the Fargo Police Department. Neither department had officers available to speak about the case as of Tuesday.

The Fargo Police Department did post about Jordan’s disappearance and said they were collaborating with the Arkansas Police on the investigation. “While there is no indication at this time that Simeon has returned to the Fargo area,” the statement read, “FPD is seeking any information on his potential whereabouts.”

Anyone with information on Jordan’s whereabouts is encouraged to contact the Fargo Police Department at 701-451-7660. Anonymous tips can be submitted by texting the keyword FARGOPD and the tip to 847411.

www.nbcnews.com/dateline/two-weeks-25-year-old-jordan-simeon-disappeared-road-trip-n1292716



Thoughts? I am placing Jordan's case in the Missing on TV section because of the above coverage on Dateline NBC's "Missing in America" digital series. Also, I put North Dakota and Arkansas as the missing locations since Jordan is from North Dakota but was last seen in Arkansas (along with agencies from both states investigating).

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