Even after 13 years, the disappearance of her daughter is still raw for Shelley Fillipoff.

Emma Fillipoff was 26 when she was last seen on the evening of Nov. 28, 2012, walking barefoot near the Fairmont Empress Hotel.

Emma had called her mother in the Ottawa area on the day she went missing after leaving a women’s shelter in distress, and asked her to come and get her.

Someone who noticed she was barefoot called 911, and Victoria police located her and talked to her for close to an hour before letting her go on her way. She hasn’t been seen since.

Victoria police said in a statement Friday, the 13th anniversary of Emma Fillipoff’s disappearance, that the case is now with its Historical Case Review Unit.

In the statement, police said that when they met with Emma on the evening of Nov. 28, 2012, they determined she was safe, although she “appeared to be suffering the onset of some mental-health issues.”

They said her van was later found in an unspecified hotel parking lot nearby and contained most of her belongings — including her passport, laptop, journals, camera and recently borrowed library books.

Despite the redesignation of the case, Shelley Fillipoff said police assured her they would continue to follow any tips.

The reclassification of the disappearance is one of the things she discusses in a new 36-minute video podcast by filmmaker Kimberly Bordage of Bayberry Films, based in Dartmouth, N.S.

“A historic missing-person case is really what we call a cold case,” she said. “I knew it was coming. I felt that it was already a cold case in terms of the police.”

Still, the designation “was like a kick in the stomach,” she said.

She said she still thinks about her daughter innumerable times in a day. “Thirteen years and I don’t have a moment really, almost, where I’m not thinking of Emma.”

The podcast, which can be viewed at vimeo.com/1135787821, will be followed by the first episode of a six-part documentary on the case to be released Jan. 6 — Emma’s 40th birthday — through bayberryfilms.com and helpfindemmafillipoff.ca.

Fillipoff said she’s grateful that Bordage has taken such an interest in Emma’s case and is helping to keep it in the public eye, which increases the chances of somebody finding her.

She said the 13th anniversary of her daughter’s disappearance feels “painfully familiar.” While she remains hopeful, as time goes on, keeping that hope alive is becoming more difficult, although she finds strength in her three other children.

Fillipoff noted that Emma loved Christmas with the family and took charge of decorating the tree with her youngest brother, Alexander.

Before making her way to Victoria, Emma went to North Island College and completed a chef program, worked in Campbell River for a few years, then returned to Ontario for a while, her mother said.

Then in 2011, she decided Victoria was where she wanted to be.

She didn’t really have set plans and was going to sort of “wing it,” Fillipoff said.

She said she was sure Emma’s resilience and intelligence would stand her in good stead and she would be OK.

“But as it turns out, she wasn’t OK at all, not at all.”

More information on Emma and other missing-person cases is available at victoriacrimestoppers.ca/missing_people.

jbell@timescolonist.com

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Original article: https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/daughters-disappearance-still-raw-on-13th-anniversary-11556732