“She was very happy that day when I saw her,” Lela Mailman told Dateline about the last time she saw her daughter, Melanie James. It was the spring of 2014. “She was like, ‘OK, Mom. I’m going to go now. I love you. Have a great day,’” Lela recalled.?

Melanie was trying to find her place in the world ? specifically in the city where she grew up: Farmington, New Mexico. “She was excited about going, you know, getting -- enrolling in some classes at San Juan College,” Lela said. She added that Melanie, 21 and unemployed at the time, intended to apply for some jobs, too. “She was going to put applications in on the way back from the college.”?

In mid-April they had plans to meet up for dinner. “I was supposed to see her at five o’clock that same day when I got off work,” Lela said. “It was my payday, so we were going to go out and eat.”

Lela wanted to use that dinner to let her daughter?know she supported everything Melanie was working towards. “You know, just to keep her spirits up and give her encouragement, keep doing what she was planning to do,” Lela said. “She’s finding -- finding directions for a better future for herself.”?

But Melanie never showed up for dinner that night. “Melanie didn’t show up back at my work,” Lela said. “I figured, ‘Well, Mel’s always late.’ So I thought I’d wait like 15, 20 minutes. And I called her phone. She didn’t answer. And then I called again.”

When she didn’t a call back, Lela decided to go out looking for Melanie. “So I drove up towards the college and I didn’t see her anywhere along the way,” she said. “I could not find her.”?

That was 10 years ago. And Lela hasn’t seen her daughter since.

Lela’s other daughter, Melissa, did see Melanie again, a couple days later.?

It was April 20, 2014. Melissa was in the car driving to pick up her son when she saw Melanie with a man. “She turned around, and she pulled back,” Lela said. “And she asked Melanie, ‘Where are you going? What are you doing?’” That’s the last time anyone in the family saw Melanie.

Dateline spoke with multiple people from the Farmington Police Department about Melanie’s case: Chief Steve Hebbe, Sergeant Justin Anaya and Detective Daven Badoni.?Detective Badoni, who took over the case in late 2023, told Dateline about Melissa’s last encounter with Melanie. “The sister said it was a casual conversation. Melanie had plans of going to Albuquerque that same day. She didn’t have her belongings with her, she didn’t have a phone. She did provide her sister Melissa with a phone number that Melissa wrote on her hand with a highlighter,” the detective said. “Unfortunately, she washed her hand and never wrote [the number] down on a piece of paper.”?

“It didn’t seem like she?was in distress,” Badoni said. “She wasn’t scared or anything like that. It was just -- just her normal self, according to the sister, Melissa.”?

That sighting is where the description of what Melanie was last seen wearing comes from. “Her sister had reported she was last seen wearing a blue bandana tank top, light blue jeans, and then the black and white Converse shoes,” the detective said.

According to the Farmington Police Department, Melanie was officially reported missing on June 12, 2014. “So that’s about 53 days after when she was last seen,” Det. Badoni noted. “And as soon as we got the report, we started trying to figure out what had happened.”

Investigators tried to find the man Melissa had described seeing with her sister on April 20, 2014.?“That person has never been identified,” Det. Badoni said. After Melanie was reported missing, Melissa provided police with a description of the man: a 6' tall Black male with a slender build.

Police did attempt to track Melanie’s movements online. “Melanie’s last Facebook activity was on April 14th, which was, you know, six days prior to when she was last seen,” Badoni said. “And then her last cell phone activity was on a Saturday -- on April 19th, which is the day before her sister last saw her.”?

The Farmington Police Department did not conduct any official searches for Melanie when she was reported missing in June. “We didn’t have really any areas that we could have focused in,” Chief Steve Hebbe said.?

Lela Mailman told Dateline that she decided to search for her daughter herself. “I had to work. My hours were crazy. I was going -- getting off at 4 o’clock in the morning, 6 o’clock in the morning,” she said. “And during my spare time, I was out there driving around looking for her.”?

But she never caught a glimpse of her daughter. “Never seen her anywhere,” Lela said.?

It turned out that four days after Melanie disappeared, her purse had been found. “It was found in?the area of Yucca Avenue and 20th Street in an alleyway,” Det. Badoni said. “Somebody found it, called police. We took a found property report, and we just put it into our evidence.”?

Detective Badoni said they didn’t know the items belonged to Melanie, as she hadn’t been reported missing at that time. “So not knowing that this is a missing person because she hadn’t been reported missing, we just put it into our evidence for safekeeping,” Det. Badoni explained. “And it was later linked at a later date to back to Melanie.”

The Farmington Police Department wanted to test Melanie’s purse. “We did swap the handle of a purse for DNA. We did collect a few things from that bag for DNA purposes,” Detective Badoni said. “However, our state lab did not accept it because we don’t have evidence of a crime.”??

The detective said that this is standard procedure for all of their cases. “Our New Mexico Department -- forensic laboratory in Santa Fe only accepts lab requests for crimes,” Badoni said. “And in this case, it’s a missing person investigation.”?

Badoni said investigators at the time did reach out to those in Melanie’s circle to see if anyone had information on her whereabouts. “This case kind of revolves around her peers, the people who hung out with her,” he said. “And nobody has really come forward to give us any helpful information at this point.”??

The Farmington Police Department is still actively working Melanie’s case. “Police are trying to locate somebody who they want to interview related to the last communication” Melanie had, Chief Hebbe said. “Someone that we believe could help the case.”

Lela told Dateline that about five months after Melanie’s disappearance, she?got a call from a woman she knew who worked at a Family Dollar in Farmington. “She goes, ‘Your daughter’s -- your daughter’s here, she’s here, she’s here,’” Lela said. “I’m at work, so I hurry up and call my son.”?

Lela said her son rushed over to the Family Dollar but by the time he got there, the woman was gone. “He couldn’t find her,” she said.?

The Family Dollar employee who called Lela?later?described the encounter to her.?“She said [Melanie] was acting really weird, like somebody was watching her or something,” Lela said. “She bought a candy, and she was slowly giving her the change, and she kept looking around.”??

“We looked at the footage, and it was her,” Lela said. “After that, we had no sightings of her.”

That sighting at the Family Dollar gave Lela a new outlook on her daughter’s case. “It gave me a whole lot of hope. You know, I was getting into a depressive state of mind,” she said. “I just walked around in confusion. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I couldn’t remember what I did that day. I was not sleeping. I was barely eating.”?

She began to see Melanie everywhere. “It started playing tricks on my mind, and I see people walking, and I think it’s her, and I turn around and go back and it’s not her,” Lela said.

Over the last decade, multiple detectives have been assigned to Melanie’s case. “It’s certainly a reality over a lengthy case for any department,” Chief Hebbe said. “You’re going to face personnel who get promoted, personnel who retire, personnel who just quit.”?

For investigators, that turnover is a double-edged sword. “On the one hand, I actually like having a different detective come in and put eyes on a case that we’re struggling on to see if there is something that’s missing,” Chief Hebbe told Dateline. On the other hand, there is the chance that information can be lost over time. “The more hands that are into it, the more a possibility there is that something gets overlooked and doesn’t get passed on.”?

Chief Hebbe is confident that Det. Badoni, who is the lead on the case right now, will be able to provide fresh eyes that will benefit the investigation. “He’s come in and looked at other cases that have been languishing and, with fresh eyes, he’s helped solve some of those,” he said.?

The chief said that while the department has no evidence of foul play in Melanie’s case, they are concerned that something bad has happened to her. “We don’t have any facts that indicate it, right? We don’t have any blood, we don’t have any --. But just standing back as an average person looking over it, the fact that she’s been missing for 10 years, the fact that we haven’t had other agencies have contact with her, you know, does lead me to think that there is foul play,” Hebbe said. “So, we don’t have the specific facts that lead us down to a crime, but we do believe from the length of time of no contact with law enforcement, no visitation or calls to the family or friends or anything like that, no other indication of her popping up someplace. Yes, we’re extremely concerned that foul play happened.”

The chief understands the family’s frustration that a decade has passed with no answers. “I wish that my agency and I could deliver justice for this family,” he said. “We’re not by any means giving up in this case.”?

Over the years, Lela has found strength and comfort among others in the community who bring attention to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Melanie is part-Walker River Paiute and Comanche and Lela has joined MMIW walks and vigils carrying a photo of her daughter. “We would just comfort each other as much as possible and encourage each other to go on and keep fighting,” she said.?

Lela admits she does struggle to keep hope alive. “10 years has been a long time,” she said. “There are some days when I have my doubts.” But when the doubts creep in she just asks God for help. “I just, you know, say, ‘You know what? God, you know and you see everything from above. Give me the strength, courage, and comfort I need to get through this,’” she said. “And all of a sudden, I was like --. I just have this hope that she’s still out there.”

Melanie would be 31 years old today. “She was very, very petite,” Lela said. Melanie is 5’ tall and weighed 116 lbs. when she disappeared. Her hair was dark black and she had a chip on one of her top front teeth at the time. “When she smiled, she wouldn’t show her teeth,” Lela explained. “When she laughed or smiled, she would kind of cover her mouth.” Melanie has a tattoo of a spade on her right hand.

If you have any information about the disappearance of Melanie James, please contact the Farmington Police Department Detective Tip Line at 505-599-1068.