Gillette nonprofit hopes to get hot tips on cold missing person cases, one coffee sleeve at a time
GILLETTE — You might soon see something new on your coffee cup while getting your caffeine fix.
“Where is Danell Bennett?” reads a sticker on a sleeve of a coffee cup from a local business. It’s one of several sleeves showcasing a missing person and the contact information for the law enforcement agency in charge of the respective case.
Some of the cases on the sleeves are more than 30 years old. Stacy Koester and Dan Stroup of WyoFind insist that there is always hope in resolving these cases.
WyoFind, a local nonprofit aimed at supporting people affected by missing persons cases in Wyoming and resolving cold missing persons cases no matter how frigid, started the coffee sleeve campaign.
The organization was founded in 2023 after the disappearance of Irene Gakwa. She was last seen in February 2022.
Koester said the sleeves are like the photos of missing people on milk cartons that she saw when she was growing up.
But it’s not just Campbell County. The trend is stretching all across the state too, with shops in Cheyenne, Jackson and Thermopolis all asking to carry the sleeves.
“We started making calls to coffee shops out of town, and then coffee shops started reaching out to us,” Koester said.
Stroup served in law enforcement for about 23 years before retiring from the Gillette Police Department in August. He has been the lead on multiple missing persons cases in Wyoming, including the Gakwa case. He now serves as the chair of the board of WyoFind.
He said he’s a liaison between WyoFind and law enforcement, including Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, for these cold cases.
Stroup said that WyoFind plays a key role by getting the public involved in cases. Police may not be able to solve every missing person case on their own.
“I’ll be completely honest — and Stacy will beat me for this — when WyoFind first started it was kind of a nuisance,” Stroup said. “But what it boiled down to (for the Gakwa case) was her activities brought light to the case. If it’s just law enforcement during active investigations we can’t talk to the press, we can’t give out information…but with WyoFind they can advertise, they can conduct searches.”
The sleeves can create leads, Stroup said. By creating awareness, a seemingly innocuous story or fact could be a lead that could crack a case.
“(In) every missing persons case, someone knows something,” Stroup said. “We’ve got several missing people, not only in this community but throughout the whole state, where it might just take one phone call.”
Stroup used the ‘Lover’s Lane” murders — a 1990 killing of two 22-year-olds in Houston, Texas — as an example. After Houston police investigated a tip in late 2025, officers were able to arrest a 64-year-old suspect.
Coffee shops in Gillette, such as Powder River Espresso, Dirty Brew and Crave — Sips & Sweets, all have sleeves now, Koester said. Main Bagel and Wyoming House of Coffee have also agreed to carry the sleeves.
The printing of the sleeves is a small operation, but Koester said her home printer already is overwhelmed with the workload to send out the sleeves across the state.
Along with Benett and Gakwa, other missing persons on the sleeves include Kristi Richardson, Roy Vavra, Nash Quinn, Amanda Gallion, Patrick Ghering and Amy Wroe Bechtel, according to WyoFind’s website.
Readers can donate to WyoFind at www.wyofind.org/support-wyofind, the organization’s Amazon wishlist on its Facebook Group, the organization’s GoFundMe page for the coffee sleeve campaign or send money and supplies to P.O. Box 242, Gillette WY, 82717.
This story was published on April 7, 2026.