Family hopes for answers, safe return in the 2019 disappearance of Ohio woman Paige Coffey

NBC News

09-07-2025

It's been more than six years since Trinettea Williamson saw her 27-year-old daughter, Paige Coffey.
'You know your child, you know? I know Paige would never, ever just walk away,' Trinettea told Dateline. 'You know, she loved her family. We were very close. She wouldn't do that.' Paige is the oldest of three siblings, and the only girl.
'She was one of those people that thought she can save everybody. She really had a giving heart,' Trinettea said. 'She was always very close with cousins. Paige loved family.'
Lolita Polk is Trinettea's sister. She describes her niece as 'very smart, a big, out-of-the-box person' who was very artistic. 'She could draw, she could paint. She's a very good seamstress. She just loved to create,' Lolita told Dateline.
In the spring of 2019, Paige was living with her grandmother in Bratenahl and working in retail. 'She loved department stores. She moved up very quickly. She worked at JCPenney and she was in their management program,' Trinettea said.
Trinettea last saw her daughter at the end of April 2019. 'She needed a ride to work,' she said. 'I took her to work, and she texted me and asked me, could I pick her up from work? And I, you know, said yeah.' Trinettea recalls picking up Paige and dropping her off at a gas station in Oakwood Village.
'She texted me the next day and asked if she could borrow $30, so I Cash App-ed her $30,' Trinettea said. 'I asked her how she was doing. She said she was doing OK.' That is the last exchange Trinettea had with her daughter.
'She was, you know, my best friend,' Trinettea said. 'So, you know, when I wouldn't talk to her, I would call her and be like, you know, 'What's going on?''
After she didn't hear from Paige for a few days, Trinettea got concerned and called to check on her. 'I wasn't getting a response,' she said.
On May 7, 2019, Trinettea decided to call Paige's boyfriend. 'I had done that before, and he would put her on the phone,' she said. 'And he's like, 'Oh, no. We broke up, I haven't seen Paige in a long time.''
Mother's Day was coming up. 'I was like, 'You know what? If she doesn't call me on Mother's Day, then I'm going to, you know, just go to the police,'' Trinettea remembered thinking. 'I had this feeling that something just wasn't right. Something was not right,' she said. 'It was a mother's intuition.'
Mother's Day came. Paige did not call.
The whole family knew something was off by then, including Lolita's kids. 'They were very close, because they all grew up together,' Lolita said. 'So, even if she was mad at anybody, Paige would have called my son or daughter. Or even her own two brothers. But I'm just saying, she would not just cut off everybody. There's just no way.'
Trinettea says she reported Paige missing to the Bratenahl Police Department on May 17. 'I'm telling them, 'This is not like her. She would not—never go this far without calling me,'' she said.
Bratenahl is a village in the suburbs of Cleveland. 'It's like a very, very, very small city. Maybe four streets. And they don't have a big police department, but that's where she lived with her grandmother,' Trinettea said.
The family says they quickly learned that investigating a report of a missing adult is not always the same as when a child goes missing. 'If it's a child, you know, your child didn't come home by four or five o'clock—you know immediately they're missing and they gonna, like, immediately start looking,' Trinettea said. She and Lolita both told Dateline they were frustrated with the investigation from the get-go.
'At first, they were treating it like she just walked away or something. They're like, 'She's an adult, so what are you searching for?'' Lolita said. 'If they don't have foul play, whatever—she can just walk.'
Trinettea says investigators did look into Paige's bank account and social media. 'They said there was no [bank] activity,' she said. 'And she didn't have any credit cards.' Paige's social media accounts were also quiet, although Trinettea says that wasn't out of the norm. 'There was very little social media activity already before she went missing.'
Frustrated by the pace of the investigation, in July of 2019, Trinettea and Lolita reached out to the Cleveland Family Center for Missing Children and Adults for guidance and support. Cleveland Missing was founded by Gina DeJesus, and her aunt Sylvia Colon. Gina is one of the three women kidnapped and held captive for nearly a decade by Ariel Castro in Cleveland before being rescued in 2013.
'When Gina came home, we talked a whole lot about what the family had gone through, and as Gina and I talked, what we thought is 'Gosh, there's just not a lot of organizations out in the country that work specifically for and with families,'' Sylvia Colon told Dateline.
Cleveland Missing offers a variety of free services to families — from making posters to teaching them how to utilize both social media and news media. 'We really focus on the family. There's many great organizations actually looking for the missing person,' Sylvia said. 'That's not something we do, so you know, we're not impeding an investigation. We're supporting the families of the missing.'
In February of 2020, nine months after Paige's disappearance, the Bratenahl Police Department escalated Paige's case and listed her on their website and held a press conference. They also issued a press release about her disappearance, which stated, 'Bratenahl Police Department, along with the Cleveland Division of the FBI, is seeking information from the public' about Paige's case. They confirmed Paige was last seen on May 7 at the Steelyard Commons area of Cleveland.
'Paige had a close relationship with her family and friends and was in frequent contact with them,' Richard Dolbow, who was the police chief at the time, said at the press conference. 'It's extremely unusual that nine months have passed and no one has heard or seen Paige Coffey.'
'We strongly believe that someone in this community has a vital piece of information that law enforcement needs,' Dolbow continued. 'We are urging anyone with information about Paige's whereabouts or Paige's location, please call law enforcement immediately.'
When asked at the press conference if Paige's case was a criminal investigation, Dolbow stated, 'We do not know at this time. She could be sitting on a sunny beach,' he replied. 'We are keeping all options on the table. It is an active investigation. We are just trying to bring answers to this loving, caring family.'
'I don't think she's on a sunny beach,' aunt Lolita Polk said at the press conference. 'Because if she was, I would be there with her.'
Along with the investigations by the Bratenahl Police and the FBI, Paige's case is receiving special attention from the Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation. 'The state of Ohio started a team of people to try to work on cases that haven't been solved,' Trinettea said. 'So they did say that Paige was one of those cases, which is wonderful.'
In 2025, Sylvia Colon of the Cleveland Missing Center got an opportunity to try to effect change in Ohio. 'I was part of the governor's task force, actually a working group, on how to deal more efficiently and effectively with families of the missing, and that kind of thing,' Sylvia said. 'We just came out with recommendations and we're working on some legislation.'
Cleveland Missing has been providing support to Paige's family for six years now. 'They're an amazing family,' Sylvia said. 'Trinettea just has tons and tons of support, and I think it's a testament to, you know, who Paige is, right? Paige is missed and she's loved. And her family supports her mom so that she can hopefully come home.'
And at this point, the family is working to keep Paige's story alive. 'There's always a new news cycle, and so it's really hard to keep people interested in a story,' Sylvia told Dateline. 'Especially an adult missing person and a person of color.' The Center is also dedicated to keeping Paige's name out there, featuring her case on its website along with the cases of other missing person, like Keshaun Williams and Ashley Summers, both of whom have been featured by Dateline.
They've also included Paige in a unique project designed to generate tips in Ohio missing persons cases: a playing card deck. 'We picked 52 cold cases from the middle–really, Northeast Ohio, had them printed, and sent them to prisons and jails in Ohio only,' Sylvia said. Paige is featured as the King of Hearts. Sylvia is hopeful the deck will help drum up information. 'Somebody knows something out there about somebody,' she said. 'My feeling is if we can bring one person home — find one person — then it was well worth all of this.'
In June 2025, Dateline contacted Charles LoBello, the current chief of the Bratenahl Police Department, with questions about Paige's case. He replied that 'due to the collaborative nature of this investigation,' he forwarded the questions on to the FBI Cleveland Office. In his response, LoBello thanked Dateline for featuring Paige's story. 'Any and all exposure has the potential to generate investigative leads,' he wrote. Earlier this year, LoBello sent a statement to NBC affiliate WKYC stating that it is still an active investigation and they are accepting tips from the community.
Dateline followed up with the FBI Cleveland Office, and a public affairs specialist replied, saying they would not be able to provide comment at this time due to the ongoing nature of the investigation.
Sylvia Colon is intimately familiar with what she calls the 'perpetual state of purgatory'-- waiting for a family member to come home, waiting for answers about your missing loved one. But she does not give up hope. 'Gina was missing for nine years. And we never gave up hope that she was going to walk through the door. And nine years after she had been abducted, she walked through the door,' she said. 'So I always have hope that maybe Paige is being held against her will somewhere, and that one day she will walk through her mom's door. That would be the best gift, I think, any of us could have.'
'We just want to keep hope alive that, yeah, she's alive somewhere,' aunt Lolita said. 'And we just want her to know where she's at and brought back home.'
'She's somebody's daughter. She's somebody's sister, you know?' Trinettea said. 'And she has so many people out here that love her, but I know someone knows.'
Paige is 5'8' and weighed 230 lbs. at the time of her disappearance. She has brown eyes and was known to change her brown hair color and style frequently. She has a tattoo of piano keys on her arm. She would be 33 years old today. Crime Stoppers is offering a cash reward of $5,000 for information leading to the successful location of Paige.
Anyone with information about Paige's disappearance is asked to contact the Bratenahl Police Department at 216-681-1234 or the Cleveland Family Center for Missing Children and Adults at 216-255-8164.