Updated on December 11, 2023 – the 5th night of Hanukkah.
My name is Alisa Clamen, and I am Jesse Galganov’s mother.
I was born in Montreal, Quebec on December 1st, 1964, the 3rd night of Hanukkah. I used to be unremarkable.
I grew up in a dysfunctional family, like many other people, with a much older brother and an older sister. My brother and sister stopped talking to each other in the late 1980’s.
My brother struggled with mental illness for most of his life (something no one really talked about back then). He passed away alone in a rooming house in Toronto in August of 2016.
My sister cut all contact with our parents, me, her husband and one or both of her children in 2007, and left our family fractured. I was close to my father (who died in 2018) at age 91 and had a challenged relationship with my mother until very recently. It took me a while to reconnect with her, but I’m happy to say that I did.
I created a second family for myself along the way. A family made up of my friends, in particular, Patty, who I met when I was 12 years old, and Jenny, who I met when I was pregnant with my son Jesse in 1994.
Jenny’s daughter Brittney was born a week after Jesse.
Jenny was a second mother to my children as I worked as a lawyer to support my family. Our children grew up as siblings.
I am 59 years old, and I still live in a suburb of the city I was born in, Cote St. Luc, a predominately Anglo Jewish enclave in the mostly French speaking province of Quebec.
For 52 years, I lived an unremarkable life.
I became a lawyer, got married, had 2 children, and got divorced.
I raised my children effectively alone, put them through school, took them skiing and skating and the usual activities, sent them to a local summer camp.
My son attended Lower Canada College, a private Montreal high school, where he made lifelong friends with a group of amazing boys (Da Boyz).
I put Jesse through Wesleyan University, a selective liberal arts college in Middletown, Connecticut where he made another group of amazing friends.
Jesse graduated in May of 2017 and was accepted to Sidney Kimmel Medical School, the medical faculty of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA. He was granted a deferral, worked 3 jobs during the summer of 2017, and together we planned a bare bones/10$ per day 8 month backpacking trip through South America and Southeast Asia.
On September 24th, 2017, I dropped my then 22 year old son Jesse at the airport in Montreal and he flew to Lima, Peru. We were in constant contact during those first days, and the last text I received from him was late on September 28th, 2017 telling me he was going on a trek in the mountains of Northern Peru and would be out of touch until approximately October 2nd, 2017.
On October 14th, 2017, I reported my son missing to both the Canadian and American embassies in Lima, Peru as Jesse is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada.
The last known sighting of Jesse was on October 1st, 2017 at 3:30 PM (local Peruvian time) approximately 1 kilometre below Punta Union (the peak), on the Santa Cruz trek in Huascaran National Park in Peru. No trace has been found of him or any of his belongings to this date.
I spent months fighting with technology companies, such as Apple and T-Mobile.
I tried to garner assistance from the governments of Canada, the US and Peru, with little result.
I fielded multiple fake extortion and ransom requests.
I fundraised to pay for the much higher than $2 million search for my son.
Initially I used an American company called Garda World, but they were unable to fulfill the mandate.
Subsequently I engaged an elite Israeli search and rescue team, Magnus International.
Today is December 11, 2023 and the search for Jesse continues.
During the last 6 years, I attempted to do many things.
I travelled to Peru 12 times.
In May of 2018, on my third trip, I climbed the mountain where my son disappeared, walked the entirety of his planned trek “in his footsteps”, and placed stickers with his picture along the trail. My Magnus team simultaneously ran a Remote Operated Vehicle search of all of the lakes in the area.
In July of 2018, I spent over a week sleeping at an elevation of over 15,000 feet with a group of local guides I hired to conduct a glacier search for my son.
In August 2018, after burying and eulogizing my father, I spent an additional 10 nights on the mountain with a human remains detection dog and her trainer.
I tried to close and/or make safer the Huascaran National Park, a UNESCO protected site, as our investigations revealed criminal activity and incompetence by all levels of the Park employees.
Millions of dollars spent, of which a significant amount was raised from an incredibly generous and compassionate predominantly Jewish community and world.
Hundreds of man hours of physical mountain searches. Hundreds of hours of drone searches. Helicopter searches. Water searches.
Not a trace of my son has been found yet.
My savings liquidated, my job lost.
Notwithstanding it all, I am alive and happy to be alive.
I have a beautiful daughter and a beautiful dog.
I have friends.
Friends all over the world.
This tragedy has connected me with people I would never otherwise have met, and for whom I am grateful. I am grateful every day for the love that I receive in the forms of emails, text messages, and posts. From my friends, from Jesse’s friends, from strangers. People tell me that I’m an inspiration, that they don’t know how I get out of bed in the morning. And to be honest, I don’t even know how to respond.
But I do know that everyone has a sad story. Everyone has suffered some loss in their life, be it a dog, a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a child, or perhaps a friend. And the human spirit is one of survival.
Jesse’s story is a cautionary tale, and my story is, as I’m told, an inspirational one.
And then just like that, the world changed on October 7, 2023.
Israel is and always will be my first love.
I stand with Israel.
Am Yisrael Chai.
Alisa Clamen
Jesse’s Mom 💕 🙏
P.S: After 3 difficult years living in a rental building in Cote Saint Luc which was fraught with construction issues, poor management and some unstable tenants, I moved to downtown Montreal. The golden circle. A little bit of peace. ☮️
