By Shelby Wye
A local Trenton family is trying to locate their globetrotting son – but not to bring him back home.
“If he wants to carry on over in Australia, that’s okay, we just want to know he’s okay. That’s the bottom line. We don’t want to bring him home, it’s just: where are you Trevor?” said Todd Hickerson, Trevor’s father.
Trevor Hickerson left home July 2012 to start traveling the world, which his father said was his dream.
“He was working on the potato farm in Adelaide, but apparently to get a two year working Visa, he would have to work for three consecutive months. He worked the three months, and then contacted us to say that he was moving on to get a better paying job,” said Todd.
Trevor has been out of contact with his family since July 6, 2013.
The months passed, and Todd said that it was just starting to get ridiculous.
With the help of his sister and a friend, they got the Facebook page “Help Find Trevor Hickerson” up and running. The page is now up to 4186 followers. Its full of dozens of comments a day, where people aren’t only giving their hopes and prayers to the family, but also giving tidbits of where Trevor could be.
“There’s been a lot of leeways, and it’s been all done through Facebook, and Australian and Canadian missing persons,” Todd said.
There have already been strong leads, including Trevor being spotted in a video aired on an Australian tv channel on Sept 13. In the video, he appears to be doing well.
“It was great that somebody caught, in a four minute video of backpackers, a 6 second clip of Trevor and someone he was with. They called me and my wife right away,” said Todd.
“We appreciate everything everybody has been doing. We’ve really narrowed it down where we’re going with this. We have a tip he might be in New South Wales, Australia, working on a farm, so people are checking out the farms there.”
The family is now in contact with the Australian and Ottawa police, attempting to request a search for a missing person via Interpol’s resources.
“The Australian police called us last night and want to help us as well, but until they get the okay from Canada, they can’t do much,” said Todd.
The family is still hopeful that this ordeal will be over sooner rather than later.
“We’re quickly getting answers, and we’re hoping in a day or two we’ll find out where he is. We’ve at least found out he’s working somewhere, and by the looks of it, it’s somewhere with no Internet or anything,” said Todd, “I mean, go ahead, he should live his dream, but in the meantime, we just want to know that he’s safe.”