This is not a normal Christmas morning.
Don’t look at the decorations on the tree or the presents scattered across the floor.
Look at the woman’s face.
She isn’t smiling.
Look closer at her shirt: it says, **“Find Jessyca.”**

This is **Monica Lukasavige**, and her 13‑year‑old daughter, **Jessyca**, has been missing for over three months.
On **September 15th, 1995**, Jessyca’s dad picked her up for a scheduled weekend visit.
Two days later, she was gone.
Her family received a letter saying she had run away and was in a safe place, but her mother knew immediately that something was very wrong.

“I know how my child speaks, I know how my child writes,” Monica says.
“It was her writing, but it sounded like it was dictated to her.”
Monica’s ex‑husband said Jessyca was supposed to be going on a trip that weekend with a teacher’s aide to meet a publisher about her writing.
There was no sign of him or Jessyca, but her family refused to give up their desperate search across the country.
It would last for over 100 days.

“It was horrifying to know that she could be anywhere,” Monica recalls.
Investigators found a bunch of receipts: a knife, rope, duct tape—things that could be used to restrain somebody.
“This was the worst nightmare you’d ever want to imagine,” a family member says.
“I don’t care if it’s 10 years, I would still be looking for her.”
Monica insists, “I will not let any negative thoughts come in at all. She will be back home.”

It’s 1995.
Thirteen‑year‑old Jessyca lives with her family in **Eau Claire, Wisconsin**.
Her parents are divorced, and she spends most of her time with her mom.
While dealing with the pain of the divorce, Jessyca finds comfort in expressing her feelings through art and writing.
She even joins a writing club led by a teacher’s aide at school.

On **September 15th**, Jessyca goes to her dad’s house for a scheduled weekend visit.
Two days later, her mom gets a call from her ex‑husband.
He tells her Jessyca is missing and he thinks she ran away.
Monica knows immediately that something is wrong and demands answers.

“He goes, ‘I think Jessyca might’ve ran away from home.’”
“I knew that was nonsense and I said, ‘Who is she with?’” Monica says.
“He didn’t want to say at first, and I yelled at him, ‘Who is she with?’”
Finally he answered: “**Steven Oliver**.”

Back in **1991**, four years earlier, new neighbors had moved in next door: a man named Steven Oliver and his son, Ryan.
Ryan and Jessyca played together, and Ryan’s dad got a job at the elementary school as a teacher’s aide.
He quickly recognized Jessyca’s talent and passion for writing.
She joined a writing club that he led.

As he spent more time with her—often separating her from her classmates—Monica grew increasingly uneasy.
She began to worry about the man’s true intentions.
“I called Steven Oliver and I said, ‘You’re a nice person, but we just don’t feel comfortable with this relationship and so we’re just gonna stop seeing you,’” she remembers.
He was very apologetic and wished them well.

Shortly after Monica told him she didn’t want him spending time with her daughter, the Olivers suddenly moved out of the house next door.
Jessyca and her mom both felt a sense of relief—briefly.
That relief turned to fear when they found out where he’d moved: right across from Jessyca’s dad’s house.
“Chills went up and down my spine,” Monica says.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, there’s something wrong with this guy.’ He had my daughter in his sights.”

Monica brought her concerns to her ex‑husband, Dale, but he dismissed them.
He said Oliver seemed nice and there was no need to worry.
Desperate, Monica even called an attorney to see if she could stop her ex‑husband from allowing Oliver access to their daughter.
She was told it wasn’t in her legal rights.
In **September 1995**, her worst nightmare came true.

Dale told her that Steven Oliver was taking Jessyca to get her writing published.
They were supposed to meet with a publisher in **Madison, Wisconsin**, but they never came back.
He hadn’t told Monica anything about letting Oliver take Jessyca on a trip alone.
She never would have allowed her daughter to go with him if she’d known.
They went to the police to report Jessyca missing, and just days later, they received a letter.

“And it said, ‘Don’t come look for me. I’m in a safe place,’” Monica recalls.
“I know how my child speaks, I know how my child writes. It sounded like it was dictated to her.”
The letter made it seem like Jessyca had run away.
But Monica had already been worried about Steven Oliver and knew there was more to the story.
Even she didn’t know how much pain was hidden behind her daughter’s writing.

Jessyca had met Steven Oliver when she was only in the **third grade**.
No one else knew what he was really doing when he pulled her aside.
“Nobody knew Oliver would pull me aside, ‘Follow me,’ into his house,” Jessyca later said.
“Then he would lock me up in one of the rooms and then he would sit me on his lap.”
“I always went home feeling dirty and that I did something wrong.”

Oliver would criticize Jessyca and take her to a different room to punish her.
He manipulated her, telling her she wasn’t pretty or smart and that no one would ever love her.
He sexually abused her and hit her if she didn’t do what he told her to do.
“He repeatedly told me that if I told anybody that he would kill my family members and then kill me,” she says.
“I was terrified of that because I didn’t want my parents to suffer.”

Jessyca was lost.
At such a young age, she was dealing with what no child should ever endure.
She didn’t know what to do.
Because of Oliver’s threats, she never told anyone he was abusing her.
All she could do to get through it was think about her family and desperately try to keep them safe.

The abuse went on for years.
Then Oliver decided to take her away from her family as well.
On **September 16th, 1995**, Jessyca’s dad sent her off on a trip with Oliver alone.
Her family didn’t know what was really happening.
Her father believed Oliver was helping Jessyca with her schoolwork and writing.

“My dad set me aside, Oliver was there and they said that, ‘You’re gonna go with him to get your book laid out and published,’” Jessyca remembers.
“I had asked, ‘Did my mom say it was okay?’ and they said, ‘Yes.’”
“And I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t think my mom would be okay with this.’”
“But I was a kid. I trusted what they said, so I did what they told me to do.”

Jessyca obeyed her dad and left with Oliver early in the morning.
She dozed off in the car, holding onto the hope that he was telling the truth about taking her to meet with a publisher.
When she woke up, her worst fears were confirmed.
“He had my feet tied to the bottom of the car and then my arms were tied behind my back,” she says.

“He told me, ‘You piece of s***. Nobody wants you, nobody loves you. You’re never going home, and no one’s gonna be looking for you.’”
“I was really scared, feeling like I wouldn’t be seeing my family again.”
Jessyca had no idea where they were or what he was planning to do.
He told her she had to call him “Dad” now and that her name was **Cindy Johnson**, while he was “Dave Johnson.”

“My mind’s racing a thousand miles a minute,” Jessyca says.
“Why is this happening to me? What is he gonna do to me? Is he going to kill me?”
While she desperately tried to understand what was happening, they pulled into the parking lot of an airport.
Suddenly, Oliver took out a knife.

At the time, airport security was nothing like it is today.
He was able to bring a weapon in easily, threatening Jessyca at every moment.
“There was no security, there’s no surveillance cameras, there’s no metal detectors,” she recalls.
“So he had a knife to the back of me the whole entire time.”
No one even knew she was missing yet.

At such a public place, Jessyca still hoped someone might notice her and question what was going on.
Even one person stepping in could make all the difference.
But her hope quickly faded as they walked through the airport.
“We got to the airplane. I had to take my seat,” she says.
“Nobody questioned, ‘Where are you guys going? Where are you from? Is this your daughter?’ Nothing.”

None of the strangers around them had any idea how much danger she was in.
As the flight took off, the only thing Jessyca could do was think of her family and wonder if they would be able to find her.
Back in Eau Claire, police rushed to Steven Oliver’s house.
There, they found his ex‑wife and his son.

“Steven Oliver had his ex‑wife reunite with their son, who he had custody of at the time,” an investigator explains.
“He even had his ex‑wife move into the home with the son.”
“This wasn’t a spur‑of‑the‑moment thing. Steven Oliver did a lot of preparation for this trip.”
They searched the house and found a series of disturbing receipts.

“He had made several purchases that we were able to find,” an officer says.
“Some duct tape, I believe it was, rope, he had a knife—things that could be used to restrain somebody.”
“He was clearly setting this whole thing up to abduct her.”
Investigators interviewed Oliver’s neighbors, coworkers, anyone connected to him, trying to gather as much insight as possible.

The search for Jessyca grew quickly.
Her family worked to spread her name and face everywhere.
They put up posters, did TV interviews, and pushed her story into the public eye.
As days went by with no more letters or communication from Jessyca, they refused to give up.
“I will not let any negative thoughts come in at all,” Monica insisted. “She will be back home.”

As news spread, new leads came in.
Police received tips about possible sightings, but nothing panned out.
Months passed without any news.
With winter approaching, her family was terrified that Oliver might be hiding her somewhere without heat.
Then, in **November 1995**, there was a breakthrough.

Police found Oliver’s car at the **Kansas City Airport**.
After the discovery of the car, there was renewed hope that they could trace Oliver and Jessyca.
But that hope was short‑lived.
“You could get on an airplane by just saying you’re Joe Smith,” an investigator explains.
“Checking the rosters of those flights didn’t come up with anything of any consequence.”

“It was horrifying to know that she could be anywhere because it is a big world out there,” Monica says.
While her family searched across the country, Jessyca was far from home.
After their flight, Oliver bought supplies to disguise them.
He cut Jessyca’s hair and dyed it dark so people wouldn’t recognize her.
Then he took her to a nearby hotel.

At the front desk, he used their fake identities—father and daughter **Dave and Cindy Johnson**—and told a story.
“Oliver was great at telling stories,” one investigator says.
“He gave them this sob story: ‘Well, we’re moving down south to start a new life and Cindy’s really sad, and has been having a hard time dealing with the death of her mom and her twin brother in a car accident.’”
They believed him and gave them a room.

But Oliver quickly grew paranoid about being found.
He often looked outside, scanning the parking lot for any Midwestern license plates.
Nervous, he decided they needed to move to another hotel.
He told the same story, and added that he’d be homeschooling his daughter, so she wouldn’t be leaving the room much.

To Jessyca’s horror, part of the hotel needed renovations.
They were given a room in the back, in a section not open to the public.
Now, instead of being near other guests who might hear or see her, there was no one around.
Nobody could hear her from the room.
“The first time I went into the hotel room, it was really dark, scary, it was dusty,” Jessyca says.

“There’s cockroaches everywhere. It was just really gross.”
“In the middle of the night, after I knew that Oliver was asleep, I would cry.”
“I knew it was serious and that I wasn’t gonna be returning home to my family.”
Jessyca was terrified.
As soon as Oliver left the room, she tried to escape.

She quickly realized she couldn’t get out because the room was locked from the outside.
“I couldn’t get out, I couldn’t run away,” she recalls.
“The key, he always had that with him.”
“He’s like, ‘I will kill you and I will stab you.’”
“There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he wouldn’t do that because he had stabbed me before.”

Oliver had already hurt Jessyca in the past.
Even with his threats, she refused to give up completely.
She noticed the rotary phone in their room.
When he stepped out again, she ran to it.
He could walk back in at any moment and punish her, but she was willing to risk it for a chance to call for help.

“I’m trying to dial my phone number and it just didn’t work,” she says.
“I’m like, ‘I know what my phone number is.’”
“I found out that Oliver was able to rewire it. So then if you were to dial ‘5,’ it could be a ‘6.’ Dial a ‘7,’ it could be a ‘4.’”
“So there was no way that I was going to be making a phone call to anybody.”

Jessyca couldn’t call anyone and couldn’t get out.
She was running out of options.
There was no escape.
All she could do was picture herself back with her family and cling to the hope that they would find her.
The longer she stayed in that room, the harder it became to believe.

“All I would think about was that he was right, that I was stupid because I couldn’t even figure out how to call my mom on the phone,” she says.
“I didn’t think that I would ever see my family again.”
As days turned to weeks and weeks turned to months, Jessyca’s hope crumbled.
Oliver constantly abused her—sexually, physically, emotionally.

“I was never allowed to leave the room,” she remembers.
“I spent most of the days tied up to the bed in the hotel room.”
“I wasn’t allowed to eat whenever I wanted to because I was ‘fat and ugly.’”
“So the only time I was allowed to eat was if he gave me food, and if I deserved food then I could eat.”

“I was beaten really hard in the stomach by his fist that I could barely even walk,” she says.
“And it hurt the worst when he said that my parents and my family friends didn’t love me or didn’t want me anymore.”
“It was really hard.”
He kept calling her **Cindy Johnson**, and after so much pain, “Cindy” started to become her identity.

Every time she tried to remember her past, Oliver hurt her more.
The loving, happy young Jessyca began to fade away.
She wasn’t just losing hope of escaping alive—she was losing her true self.
“Every day you’re listening to, ‘You’re worthless, you’re damaged goods,’” she says.
“You begin to believe it.”

“I didn’t know that my name was Jessyca,” she admits.
“I knew that my parents and my friends are looking for me, but the images of them, they just kind of faded.”
While Jessyca was being brainwashed, her family refused to give up.
The thought that they might see Jessyca again someday kept them going.
Every day they tried to think of more ways to help in the search.

They managed to get Jessyca’s picture on billboards and posters on the backs of semi‑trucks.
Her story spread across the country.
Various TV shows and publications picked it up, including the massively popular series **“America’s Most Wanted,”** hosted by **John Walsh**, who had lost his own son after an abduction.
The show called on the public for help, and the manhunt for Steven Oliver grew.

Monica leaned on her brother Steve for support.
“My brother Steve was… phenomenal isn’t even the word for it,” she says.
“He worked tirelessly on trying to find Jessyca.”
“We did a lot of praying and hoping,” another family member recalls.
“Everybody poured their hearts into it. I wouldn’t have given up. I don’t care if it’s 10 years, I would still be looking for her.”

“I always felt she was alive and I was trying to send my strength prayerfully to her,” Monica says.
Jessyca felt that connection too.
“I prayed all the time, I had the courage and strength and hope that my family would find me and bring me home,” she says.
Even as her identity faded, prayer kept a fragile link to who she really was.

Jessyca remembered something her mom used to tell her that gave her strength.
“I knew that my family back in Wisconsin would be looking for me,” she says.
“Because my mom had mentioned that if anything bad ever happened to myself or my brothers, that she would find us.”
“Thinking about home and being back with my family was enough to keep me alive.”

**Christmas Day, 1995.**
Monica tried to hold it together and celebrate with her other children.
But after more than three months of searching, the emotional toll weighed heavily on the family.
“It was heartbreaking waking up on Christmas morning and she wasn’t there,” Monica says.

“There was no joy, there was no smiles, there was no happiness.”
“To think of your innocent baby in that kind of predicament where she’s helpless—and it’s really hard for a mother to live with that.”
Jessyca’s mom was heartbroken.
She knew that the more time passed, the less likely it was they’d find Jessyca alive.
Even over the holidays, she was still trying to think of anything else she could do.

On **December 28th, 1995**, 104 days after Jessyca went missing, FBI investigator **Jerry Southworth** got a call that changed everything.
“I got a call about 11:00 at night from ‘America’s Most Wanted’ and they said, ‘We think we got something here,’” he recalls.
“There’s a lady who says that she thinks she knows where they’re at.”
“She said, ‘They’re staying at that hotel. I know them under different names. Father and daughter, Dave Johnson and Cindy Johnson.’”

“I called the Houston office of the FBI,” Southworth says.
“I told them, I said, ‘I’m sure this woman’s got it right. You’re gonna find her there.’”
Back at the hotel, it was the middle of the night.
Jessyca woke up, confused and scared, when she heard pounding on the door.

“Oliver just said, ‘Don’t you dare do anything. Don’t you say anything,’” she recalls.
“They knocked again and they said, ‘This is the FBI.’”
“I did not know that I was being rescued by the FBI. I just thought that some strangers were coming into the room.”
“They flashed their badges. I was freaking out because I was like, ‘Okay, is this fake? Is this real? Am I actually going home?’”

At that same moment, Monica was on the phone with her sister.
They were planning their next steps in the search when call waiting beeped in.
It was the FBI agent.
“We got Jessyca and we got Steve,” he told her.
“She’s in one squad car and he’s in the other. Those few words changed our lives completely.”

Jessyca was finally safe.
But after being manipulated by Oliver for so long, it was hard for her to understand she was truly being rescued.
She was still terrified.
When they asked her name, she told them it was **Cindy Johnson**.
She didn’t even respond to “Jessyca” anymore.

They took her to the FBI field office and showed her pictures of herself.
She was still lost in the nightmare of “Cindy Johnson.”
Everything changed when they let her call her mom.
When she heard Monica’s voice on the other end of the phone—after three and a half months of not knowing if she ever would—it finally clicked.

This was why she’d had the strength to keep going: the hope of seeing her family again.
They hadn’t given up their search.
Because of that, “Cindy Johnson” began to fall away.
“But then after she started talking to me and I started to remember that my name was Jessyca and that she was my mom,” Jessyca says.
“I was really excited and I knew I was gonna be going home and seeing my family again.”

Monica got on the first flight she could to Houston.
At the airport, she was finally reunited with her daughter after 104 agonizing days of uncertainty.
“We were led down a hall and opened the door and there she was,” Monica remembers.
“I saw my mom coming out of the airport and I started running towards her,” Jessyca says.
“I gave her a big hug and she’s crying, I’m crying.”

“I can still feel it to this day, the elation,” Monica says.
“Everything that we had lived for was standing right in front of me.”
“It was the late Christmas miracle,” Jessyca says.
“Best day of my life.”
At last, Jessyca was free from Steven Oliver.

She went home and slept in her own bed for the first time in over three months without anyone hurting her.
But there was still a long healing process ahead.
Things were hard for Jessyca.
While enduring all the emotional trauma, she also had to deal with the physical damage from Oliver’s beatings.
She needed multiple surgeries.

Even at school, Jessyca was bullied for what she went through.
People criticized her for not escaping on her own.
Some even claimed she was “lucky” for being kidnapped because of the attention it brought.
“I got ridiculed from junior high to high school to college,” she says.

“‘Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you get away?’”
“I felt guilt, it’s awful.”
“They don’t know what it’s like to be in our shoes and to be kidnapped and traumatized.”
Jessyca had many bad memories associated with school.

It was where she was bullied after her return home.
It was also where Steven Oliver abused his position as a teacher’s aide to isolate and harm her.
But with the support of her family and other teachers, she learned to be stronger than her bullies.
She discovered there were trustworthy adults who truly wanted the best for her.

They helped her move forward, refusing to let Oliver control her future the way he had controlled her childhood.
In **June 1996**, Steven Oliver went on trial.
Jessyca’s testimony was crucial to his conviction.
Oliver’s lawyers tried to argue that she went with him willingly and had lured him to Texas.

Jessyca had to relive everything she’d endured, testifying for hours.
She bravely told her story to make sure he couldn’t hurt anyone else.
He was sentenced to **40 years in prison** without the possibility of parole.

Before her kidnapping, Jessyca had loved art and writing.
Afterward, she slowly found herself again through creative work.
She got good grades in school.
She graduated college with honors, majoring in psychology and minoring in sociology and criminal justice law enforcement.

Because of all the abuse and trauma, doctors thought it was unlikely she would be able to have children.
She got married and, miraculously, was able to have kids of her own.
She still has moments when she’s reminded of the horrors she endured, but she is surrounded by loved ones who help her stay grounded in who she really is.

Today, Jessyca is an advocate for other survivors.
She does everything she can to prevent others from going through what she did.
“It’s very hard to relive the memories of what happened to my daughter,” Monica says.
“But it’s better to talk about it, to release some of that, and mainly to help other people learn to prevent these things from happening again.”

“I survived so that I could continue living a life and being a part of the community and with my family,” Jessyca says.
“I’m a symbol of hope to a lot of the parents out there that still have missing kids, and for the kids that have returned home—it’s not a lot.”
“Also talking to them gives them hope, makes them stronger.”

“Today, I’ll go and do speeches to the grade schools and middle schools and high schools about physical abuse, sexual abuse,” she explains.
“And if I can have one person or 50 people come forward, all the pain and all the nightmares and stuff that I had to deal with just to do it—I think it’s worth it.”