Trooper S. Renee Padgett

The trooper who made missing kids photos visible on the sides of trucks

If you've driven Interstate 5, a highway in British Columbia, or a stretch of road in the western United States or Mexico, there's a good chance you've already met Renee Padgett's work without knowing her name. You've seen it on the side of a semi-trailer — the face of a missing child, sometimes a second image showing what that child might look like now, years on, and a number to call.

That program is called Homeward Bound. A Washington State Trooper named Suzanne Renee Padgett dreamed it up, and it has outlived her. We tell her story here because it is exactly the kind of life this foundation exists to honor: a public servant who spent decades helping strangers, who turned her own blood-cancer fight into a campaign to grow the bone marrow registry, and whose death was ultimately ruled a line-of-duty sacrifice.

From Hollywood to the Washington State Patrol

Renee was born on January 31, 1968, in Hollywood, California — arriving early, while her parents were on vacation. The middle of three sisters, she grew up across a number of cities and lived, by every account, at full throttle. She was a relentless athlete: track and field, basketball, volleyball, drill team, and competitive bodybuilding. By the age of 14, she had already decided what she wanted to be — a police officer.

After graduating from Boise's Capital High School in 1986, she moved to the Pacific Northwest and worked a string of jobs while she chased a single goal: becoming a Washington State Trooper. She got there at 21. The Washington State Patrol hired her on March 11, 1991, as a Trooper Cadet assigned to Gig Harbor. That summer she joined the 73rd Trooper Basic Training Class, and on December 20, 1991, she was commissioned and posted to Bellevue — the district she would call home for the rest of her career.

A 27-year career built on solving problems

Renee was good at the part of the job everyone sees — she earned a commendation for her work in traffic safety, an Outstanding Public Service Award, and a Detachment of the Year honor in 1996–1997. But what set her apart was a knack for the part most people never see: she liked to find a stubborn, recurring problem and engineer a way to actually fix it.

In September 2003, she became the Wrecking Yard Trooper for King County — one of the troopers responsible for inspecting wrecking yards, scrap processors, and hulk haulers across the state. It is unglamorous, dangerous, detail-heavy work, and she became known for it. She received the Chief's Award for Professional Excellence for the investigation and successful prosecution of dangerous, illegal wrecking yards. In 2008, the agency named her Commercial Vehicle Trooper of the Year. In 2009, she earned another commendation for an effort she called "Curbstoning" — identifying and pulling unsafe rebuilt vehicles off the road before they could hurt anyone. In 2014, she launched Operation SAFE Student, cracking down on drivers who blow past school-bus stop paddles; the Washington State Patrol named it Project of the Year.

Homeward Bound: a missing child's face on every highway

Her signature idea was the simplest and the biggest. Working in the Commercial Vehicle Division, surrounded all day by trucks that cross state lines and international borders, Renee saw something the rest of us drive past: thousands of square feet of moving billboard, traveling exactly where missing-child posters can't.

She started the Homeward Bound program in 2005. The premise: put a missing child's photo on the side of a semi-trailer, add an age-progressed image of what they might look like now, and let that trailer carry the case down every highway it travels. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has long held that roughly one in six missing children is recovered because someone recognized a photo — so Renee set out to put those photos in front of as many eyes as possible. In 2006, the first trailer rolled out in partnership with Gordon Trucking.

It worked well enough to be recognized nationally. In 2007, Renee received the Herman Goldstein Award for Excellence in Problem-Oriented Policing — the field's top honor — for Homeward Bound. Over the years the program has featured the cases of more than two dozen missing people, and the Patrol credits the public exposure from the trailers with assisting in recoveries. The roll call of names the trucks have carried is its own kind of memorial: Teekah Lewis, Misty Copsey, Alyssa McLemore, Sofia Juarez, and others — children and young people whose families never stopped looking. "We want to bring children home, where they belong," the Patrol's Missing Persons Unit program manager said at one unveiling. That was Renee's whole idea, in seven words.

Multiple myeloma: when the trooper became the patient

In April 2012, while qualifying with her firearm, Renee collapsed at the range and was rushed to the hospital. The following month she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare cancer of the plasma cells in the bone marrow. She attacked it the way she attacked everything. She went through chemotherapy and radiation, received a stem-cell transplant, and fought her way to a brief remission. When her condition allowed, she kept working, taking on administrative duties for the Patrol because sitting still was never in her.

Then she did something that tells you exactly who she was. Facing her own life-threatening blood cancer — one whose best hope was a matched stem-cell donor — she turned the spotlight outward. The Washington State Patrol organized blood and bone marrow donor registration drives in her name. Renee's goal wasn't just to find her own match; she set out to get 1,000 people onto the marrow registry under her name, so that other patients fighting the same kind of cancer would have a better chance. The campaign was called "Save Renee Padgett," and the registry code was simply TROOPERRENEE. An academy classmate put it plainly: "She's an amazing individual… just a very vibrant personality."

In January 2015, two weeks before she was cleared to return to work, the cancer came back — and this time it was more aggressive. She kept going. When she was forbidden from lifting weights, she went on walks wearing her uniform for the added weight. In November 2017, she and her wife, Marcella, renewed their vows in front of family and friends. Trooper S. Renee Padgett died on September 4, 2018, in Renton, Washington, at the age of 50, after a six-year fight. She had served the Washington State Patrol and the people of Washington for 27 years.

How bone marrow and stem-cell donation give patients a chance

Renee's story is woven into the mission of this foundation. Blood cancers like the one she fought are treated with transplants — and many patients can only get one when a stranger says yes. Bone marrow donation and stem-cell donation are how a healthy adult gives a patient that chance at a matched transplant. For about 80% of donors today, it isn't surgery at all: it's a process much like donating plasma. Most healthy adults between 18 and 40 can become a bone marrow donor, and the first step is simply joining the registry. (Here is how bone marrow donation actually works, start to finish.)

The Jada Bascom Foundation doesn't run a registry or mail the kit — we point you to your own country's registry, the organization that sends the cheek swab and adds you to the worldwide list of potential donors. It is free, it takes about five minutes, and you may never be called. But if you are, you could be the match a patient like Renee was waiting for.

A line-of-duty death — and a legacy that still rolls

There is a coda that matters. In February 2021, a forensic review by the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concluded that Renee's cancer was caused by exposure to highly toxic chemicals during her 2003 investigation of an illegal auto-wrecking operation. Her death was reclassified as occurring in the line of duty — the job she chose at 14 and held for 27 years had, in the end, taken her life. On May 13, 2021, her name was dedicated onto the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C., during National Police Week. That September she was added to the King County Troopers Memorial at the Bellevue District Office, and she is honored on Washington's state law-enforcement memorial. She is survived by her wife, Marcella Egan; her son, Gedeon, and daughter, Olivia; her mother; and her sisters, Nicole and Jaclyn.

Her two missions still travel together. After Renee died, Homeward Bound paused — but in 2019 it was revived through a partnership with Kam-Way Transportation. The trailers that now carry the faces of missing children also carry something else: a memorial to Trooper Renee Padgett, and information on how to join the bone marrow registry. Bring the missing home, and help patients find their match — her two great causes ride down the highway together, on the side of a truck, right where she put them.

Those who knew her best could never quite draw the line between the woman and the work: "It was hard to separate 'Renee' from the 'Trooper.'"

Honor Renee: join the bone marrow registry

Renee spent her last years asking people to do one thing — join the registry, so the next patient finds a match faster. You can do that in her memory. It's free, and it starts with a cheek swab.