When Angel Carlick’s mother set out to search for her daughter’s body, she called her the greatest love she’d ever known.

“...People come together like this for one purpose... for the love of my life,” Wendy Carlick said, referring to around 40 people — family and strangers — who searched riverbanks in Whitehorse, Yukon one July weekend, looking for the girl.

At that time, Angel, 19, had been missing for more than one month. She was seen for the last time in Whitehorse shortly after earning her high school diploma, one of many goals she met by abandoning life on the streets and finding sobriety.

Before her death, she worked at The Youth of Today Society, a downtown Whitehorse resource centre she said changed her life. She ran a dinner program, making meals for children.

“She was like a big sister to her peers. She took care of people,” said Vicki Durrant, executive director of The Youth of Today Society.

“She watched her friends’ backs and she was a really good employee.” Angel, who was from Dease Lake, British Columbia, was saving money for something she dreamed about since her days as a young teen on the streets: Her own home. It would allow her to pull her younger brother out of Yukon’s child welfare system.

By the time someone ended her life, it was still only a dream.

To honour her memory, The Youth of Today Society named their drop-in program Angel’s Nest in 2008.

She loved to paint, and her art still covers some of the centre’s walls.

Her brother, Billy Carlick remembers snapping a picture of her in a graduation gown beside one of her murals.

“She was always smiling, and she was happy,” Carlick said. That was the last time he ever saw her.

One morning in May, Angel didn’t show up for work.

“It was a pay day so we were really concerned,” said Durrant.

Angel worked with Durrant for a year, and the two had known one another since Angel was 14 years old, so Durrant knew it wasn’t like her to miss work and forget about her cheque.

Immediately, the centre phoned Whitehorse RCMP and filed a missing persons report. But upon learning of the case, officers did not share the concern, Durrant says.

“At first I think the police thought that she may have been just a runaway, being that she was a teenager. We, of course, knew better,” she said.

“The first 48 hours, as far as timeline goes is the most important so I think they kind of lost a lot of really vital time.”

Durrant knows there are youth who run away, but she says it’s worrisome when police use those words; her fear was that Angel’s case wouldn’t be a priority if authorities thought she was on the run.

It wasn’t until 5 1⁄2 months after Angel vanished, on Nov. 9, 2007 that a hiker found her body in a wooded area in Pilot Mountain, Yukon near Whitehorse.

After eight years, Angel’s case is still unsolved. Her brother says that’s a reflection of how RCMP handle cases when the missing are indigenous.

“If it was a non-native person, it doesn’t take that long for them to solve...,” Carlick said.

Durrant says she does not wish to condemn police, but she wonders why the case is unsolved; the last she heard, three officers are working on it.

“They usually contact us probably about April of every year, just to give us an update,” she said.

Rather than supporting a federal inquiry into Canada’s missing and murdered indigenous girls and women, Durrant would like to see action to stop violence against them.

Angel’s case was not the last of its kind: On Dec. 9, 2014 Brandy Vittrekwa, 17, was found dead on a Whitehorse trail.