MENDOTA – A memorial bench for a missing Mendota woman was unveiled Saturday, along with a meeting between her adoptive parents and her birth mother. Veronica Blumhorst vanished in September of 1990, and Paul and Betty Blumhorst, along with the community have never given up hope on finding answers to her disappearance. A fundraising effort spearheaded by Wendy Becker led to the installation of two benches, a tree and a monument at Strousse Park. One bench dedicated to the memory of Veronica, and the other to her late brother Todd Blumhorst who passed away in 2013. Also in attendance was Mary Gambardella, her birth mother. According to Elizabeth Gambardella, Veronica’s half-sister, the FBI visited her mother in Pontiac, Illinois this spring to gather DNA to help with the investigation. The Gambardella family was not aware until they were contacted by authorities that the daughter given up for adoption decades earlier was missing.
