Alaska News

Troopers seek help in search for Nikiski man

Alaska State Troopers are asking for help in the search for a 49-year-old Nikiski man who has been missing for more than four days.

Darlene Conright discovered at 9 a.m. Saturday that her husband, Jack Conright, had disappeared from the couple's home on Admiralty Drive, troopers say.

"She woke up and he wasn't there," said troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters.

Troopers and a trooper canine unit, the missing man's wife and friends searched nearby buildings and property outside Nikiski. They found no sign of Conright, troopers said.

Using dogs, rescue teams continued to search the area Sunday. Volunteers have been walking the area, riding ATVs and diving in nearby lakes in search of Conright, troopers said.

A trooper helicopter failed to locate the man today. Without any idea of where to look next, troopers have called off the active search, Peters said.

"This is one of those weird things where we just don't have any place to go with it," she said. "It's kind of a like a plane going mssing. you look in the most probable area, but after that, where do you look?"

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Conright has long, dark brown hair and a mustache. He often wears a blue bandana, though Conright's wife did not know how he was dressed when he went missing, troopers said.

Troopers don't know where Conright might have been headed. He is not believed to be using any kind of motorized vehicle, but may be riding a blue woman's mountain bike that was also found missing from the home.

"To our knowledge he just left. ... We have no indication of why he went," Peters said.

Anyone with information about Conright's whereabouts is asked to call the trooper post in Soldotna at 262-4453.

Conright is a 1980 Kenai High School graduate and served in the U.S. Navy, according to a 2003 wedding announcement in the Peninsula Clarion newspaper. He was self-employed at Conright Services Auto and Marine Electrical at the time, the newspaper said.

Read The Village, the ADN's blog about rural Alaska, at adn.com/thevillage. Twitter updates: twitter.com/adnvillage. Call Kyle Hopkins at 257-4334.

By KYLE HOPKINS

khopkins@adn.com

Kyle Hopkins

Kyle Hopkins is special projects editor of the Anchorage Daily News. He was the lead reporter on the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Lawless" project and is part of an ongoing collaboration between the ADN and ProPublica's Local Reporting Network. He joined the ADN in 2004 and was also an editor and investigative reporter at KTUU-TV. Email khopkins@adn.com

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