Linda Walker, sitting in her home in rural Pequot Lakes, Minn., on Nov. 15, 2023, holds one of the last pottery pieces her daughter, Dru Sjodin, made in 2003 at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. Dru loved elephants, and Walker pointed out the tiny bird atop the top hat on the piece she keeps on a shelf in a room in her home. (Nancy Vogt / Forum News Service)

In Loving Memory of Dru

As you were

You will always be

Treasured forever

In our memory

Those words are inscribed on a marble plaque on the ground outside Linda Walker’s longtime home in rural Pequot Lakes, Minn., in memory of her daughter.

Walker vividly recalls Nov. 22, 2003 — the day her 22-year-old daughter, Dru Sjodin, went missing.

Dru Sjodin, slain University of North Dakota student. (Courtesy photo)

“I was here at home. I got a call from who at that time was Dru’s boyfriend, Chris (Lang), saying that something was wrong,” Walker said while sitting in her kitchen.

“It was the first Thanksgiving that my entire family was going to get together — my parents, my brothers and their families. And so we were all preparing for that,” she said.

“Chris called and said, ‘She didn’t show up for work.’ And I knew immediately something was wrong because she was so reliable,” Walker said of her daughter.

That moment 20 years ago changed Walker’s life, and the lives of so many more people.

Dru, a 2000 Pequot Lakes High School graduate who was attending the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, had been kidnapped from the parking lot at the Columbia Mall, where she had worked her shift at a job before not showing up later at a second job she held elsewhere.

Her body was found nearly five months later near Crookston, Minn.

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. was convicted and sentenced to death. Just this year, a judge overturned that death sentence and Rodriguez is serving life in prison.

That day

Whether it was a mother’s intuition or just knowing her daughter so well, Walker immediately knew something wasn’t right after getting Lang’s call.

“There was just so much that she had been obligated to do. She was one to show up, not one to not,” Dru’s mother said.

Walker in turn called Dru’s father, Allan Sjodin, who lived in the Twin Cities. Despite a snowstorm that night, he jumped in his truck and drove straight through to Grand Forks, Walker said.

“It’s just like we knew. He got in his truck and he literally drove into Grand Forks with just fumes of gas left in his tank,” she said.

Allan Sjodin called the next morning. He had found Dru’s car in the mall parking lot, but it had been moved.

“It wasn’t where she normally had parked, but he sat by the car until law enforcement got there,” Walker said. “And then after that, everything just imploded in our world.”

The searches

At first, Walker didn’t know what to do.

“Do mothers go searching for daughters in fields?” she asked. “I just didn’t know where to go.

“I was feeling guilty. I wanted to be home in case she called,” she said. “But yet I felt hopeless sitting here and everybody’s out searching and looking. But then I felt that this is where I needed to be.”

A person doesn’t get a manual when something like this happens, Walker said, noting she did eventually help on searches for her daughter.

She was there with Allan Sjodin and others when her daughter was found in April 2004.

“One of the officers that actually ended up finding her came up to me that morning and said, ‘You know, we’re going to find her today.’ And he turned around and they went off,” she said.

Later, they got a call from the command center at Crookston High School to return there.

“And I remember that ride like it was yesterday. It was probably not even a 20-minute ride. It felt like forever, not a word spoken in the car,” Walker said. “And we drove in and that’s when they said that they found her.”

Finding her daughter was better than never knowing what happened.

“On this journey, I’ve ended up meeting many, many parents across the United States that have never found their children. They’re still looking,” Walker said. “As horrible as it is to know what happened to Dru and to never get her back — to me, I couldn’t fathom looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life wondering if I’d ever see her.

“And I think of those families that don’t get the answers and how painful their journey has to be. Knowing is terrible, but never knowing — I just can’t imagine,” she said.

Finding Dru didn’t provide closure, though. Rather, another chapter opened with more issues to deal with as best she could.

“There’s no instructions,” Walker said again. “You’re just grateful for the support, and there’s been just a tremendous amount of support through the years.”

Becoming an advocate

Walker’s way to work through her pain was to become an advocate for children and victims of sexual assault and violence.

“I wanted to know how, in such a civilized world, could a system fail a young girl like my daughter and other young men and women and children,” she said.

Rodriguez had a long criminal record for assaults against women and had served 23 years in prison. His evaluator before he was released from prison said he was likely to reoffend.

Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., listens at his bail hearing on a kidnapping charge in Northeast Central District Court in Grand Forks, N.D., Thursday, Dec. 4, 2003. He was convicted in the murder of Dru Sjodin and sentenced to death. In 2023, a judge overturned that sentence and Rodriguez is serving life in prison. (Dave Wallis / The Forum)

Opportunities arose for Walker to become involved in legislation, including the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which includes Dru’s Law. The Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website provides information about registered sex offenders’ locations regardless of state boundaries.

Walker counts that as one of her greatest achievements.

“If you’re deciding to move from one area to another, you can see who lives where, and the worst of the worst,” she said.

She became a public speaker and involved in numerous other initiatives nationwide.

“It was my therapy to get through it,” Walker said. “If I could just get to one person, it felt rewarding.”

She remembers receiving her first letter with a return address label of “Parents of Murdered Children.”

“I was just so surprised how dark and deep all the subjects were, but also how much more could have been done,” she said. “And it seemed like a failure a lot on the victim’s part because red tape would get in the way.”

Her advocacy continued until about 2012, when she received an award in Washington, D.C., from the FBI. Soon after that, her husband, Sid Walker, died.

While proud of the work she did, Walker is also disappointed about the work that didn’t get done because legislation never received approval.

“Sometimes you felt like you were making headway, and then you took steps back,” she said.

Today

Twenty years later, Walker thinks about Dru and where she would be in life today. She gets a sense of foreboding when anniversary dates approach — like Nov. 22, the day Dru was taken, as well as the day she was found and the day of her funeral.

The Pequot Lakes Park Commission put an angel in Dru’s Garden, which honors Dru Sjodin, in North Trailside Park in Pequot Lakes, Minn., for the holiday season, as shown Nov. 15, 2023. (Nancy Vogt / Forum News Service)But she is happy.

“Yes, I’m happy. I’m happy that I have a son that has children and family. I’ve got amazing friends. And so I’m happy for that,” she said.

Her son, Sven, and his wife have eight children. Dru held her oldest nephew, who was born in 2002. Her second nephew was born the day of a candlelight vigil held for Dru in Pequot Lakes about a month after she disappeared.

“Every day I get up, I find something always to be thankful for,” Walker said. “It does no good to not try and find the best in the day. You can’t let one evil person strip it away from so many good people.

“And the outpouring of love and support — oh my gosh — through the years, and still from people all over,” she said.

She added:

“Of course, I would do anything to make it not the way it was — or is, I should say. But I don’t have that capability. And that’s not my reality.”

Remembering Dru

— The Dru Sjodin Foundation of Empowerment through Education was created last spring. The foundation’s mission statement is: “To honor Dru Sjodin, by empowering students through focused educational tools that cannot be taken away.”

— An annual golf tournament fundraiser in Pequot Lakes is still held in August in Dru’s memory, and an annual run/walk was held for years as well to create awareness of violence against women and children.

— The Louise Seliski Women’s Shelter in Brainerd, Minn., which is part of the Relationship Safety Alliance, puts up a Christmas tree to honor Dru and Erika Dahlquist — another local victim of violence in 2002 — every year. Dru’s family provided the pink ornaments that decorate the tree that stays up through Valentine’s Day.

— A documentary about Dru will air on ABC’s “20/20” in December.