Geoffrey Shoupp’s grandparents gently coaxed him to remember.
Nancy Lynn Begg Shoupp
(Courtesy Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Department)
The boy – just 3 1/2 years old at the time – was motivated to help.
He desperately wanted his mother back.
“Let’s go look for mom. I want my mom,” he told his grandparents in the spring of 1990.
Geoffrey tried and tried to tell Sue Kirkham and her husband Jim Ruckman everything he could.
His young mind stretched for tiny clues that could help reunite him with a mother, who put him and his little sister above all others.
What he remembered about a late-night argument, then a long, dark drive into the countryside would dictate what his grandparents — now in their late 70s — would do for decades to come.
They went on long drives, hour after hour into the countryside, many times.
They brought bloodhounds to promising locations and trudged through dusty prairies.
They bought special equipment to pump water out of deep pits that depleted their finances.
They hired miners to help them scour a crumbly abandoned nuclear missile silo.
They consulted psychics.
But to this day, Geoffrey’s grandparents have been unable to bring Nancy Lyn Begg-Shoupp home.
Nancy was born and raised until the age of 13 in Littleton.
She was Kirkham’s third child. Kirkham divorced her first husband and moved with her two boys and two girls to Meeker in 1970.
Nancy had blue eyes and blonde, wavy hair. The 5-feet-5 girl, who weighed 120 pounds, was smart and athletic.
Nancy was popular at the close-knit student body of Meeker High School, where she played on the varsity volleyball team and was a cheerleader.
When her mother met Kirkham, Nancy resented the man who took her father’s place. They didn’t get along too well, Ruckman said.
Nancy wanted to be an artist, so after she graduated in 1981, she moved to Denver and enrolled in a special arts education school.