A celebration of life is planned for Jim Mitchell, an 87-year-old from Arvada who’s been missing for more than a month.
The American Legion Post 161 in Arvada will host the event on Saturday from 4 to 7 p.m.
“I imagine we’re going to have a lot of people here,” said Ed Shreeve, commander of the post. “Jim had a lot of friends.”
Jim Mitchell’s pickup truck was found abandoned Dec. 14 in Golden. It had crashed into a railcar near 10th and Vasquez streets. Investigators found blood inside the cab of the pickup.
Search crews spent the next day looking for Mitchell. They searched miles of paths, trails and residential areas. Golden Police said blood hounds picked up a scent, but lost it. The search was called off.
“There has been no sense of closure here because nothing really has come out to what has happened to him,” Shreeve said.
Like the old bricks on the building, Jim Mitchell was a fixture of the American Legion Post 161. Shreeve remembers him volunteering in the kitchen to wash dishes after dinner.
“He would stay until the very last dish would come in,” Shreeve said. “Jim would almost do anything you ask him to do.”
If he wasn’t in the kitchen, you might find Mitchell on the dance floor.
“He loved to dance,” bartender Kathleen Perlmutter said. “He was always playing the jukebox.”
Mitchell joined American Legion Post 161 in July of 1988. He served on the board of directors for about eight years, Shreeve said. He is a veteran and retired postal worker.
“I still have some hope that they will find him, but it just keeps going down and down,” Shreeve said.
Some of Mitchell’s friends have started a GoFundMe in hopes of raising enough money to hire a private investigator.
Members of the American Legion are hoping for closure on Saturday. They’ll celebrate the life of the fixture – the friend who’s missing.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Jim Mitchell is asked to call Golden Police at 303-384-8045.
