Glennallen Resident Links The Caribou Hotel Fire With A Valdez Missing Person Search

Troopers Apparently Did Not Identify Burned-Out Car At The Caribou 

The car of an 86-year-old Valdez woman, who has been
 missing since November 8th, has been revealed to be one of the 5 vehicles parked outside the Caribou Hotel that was melted down in the fire of November 12th, 2025. 

Two seemingly unrelated  law enforcement cases have suddenly converged in an unlikely spot: the Caribou Hotel in Glennallen. 

Mary Jo Evans of Valdez, 86, was last seen, according to the Valdez Police Department, on November 8th, at a Valdez Museum community dinner celebrating the roadhouses of the Richardson Highway. 

Then she apparently disappeared between Anchorage and Valdez and hasn't been seen since. 

Friends and relatives became worried. The Valdez City put out the following Missing Person notice on their website. The date for the Missing Person notice is unclear, but its posting time as of Friday, November 28th was listed as "Monday" (November 24th, 2025).

It was well known from earlier news stories that five vehicles had been destroyed –- even melted down – in the alarmingly hot and fast-moving Caribou Hotel fire. When a "Glennallen resident" matched the  missing person's BOLO ("Be On The Lookout") notice from Valdez with one of the destroyed vehicles from the Caribou Hotel fire, the two cases suddenly converged.

Apparently, the Alaska State Troopers in Glennallen and the fire examiners who handled the case did  not match the melted down vehicles with all of their owners. It was only in the past few days that a local Copper Valley resident surmised, accurately – after reading the Missing Person notice – that one of the cars that was destroyed was Mary Jo Evans' 2020 blue Ford Escape with Alaska plate JTD365. 

This linked the seemingly separate cases – one a hotel fire and the other a missing person from a town 115 miles to the south. 

Mary Jo Evans whereabouts is still unaccounted for. 

News reports said that all persons inside the building during the time of the fire survived and got out safely.