SALT LAKE CITY -- Robin Putnam stepped off of a train in downtown Salt Lake City on his way from California to Colorado last year, and he hasn’t been seen since; now his parents are using social media to search for their son.
The 26-year-old man was returning from Oakland, California where he was attending art school to his home in Colorado when he got off the train during a 3 a.m. stop in Salt Lake City. His mother, Cindy Putnam, said the 10 months since then have been terrible.
“I would just love to see him walk up the driveway,” she said. “It's the most horrible thing I can imagine: to not know where my kid is.”
Robin Putnam has been listed by police as a missing and endangered person due to possible mental health issues. Cindy and her husband Doug spent most of last summer searching the streets of Salt Lake City for their son, but with no luck.
Now the couple is turning to social media, where they are using the page “Find Robin Putnam” to do what they can to bring their son home.
“I'm posting a lot of work from his teenage years and then a lot of the sketches from his journals,” Putnam said.
Putnam said she thinks Robin’s artwork may be the key to finding him. She said that no matter where Robin ended up, or in what state of mind he might be in, he would still be creating art.
“He could be sketching really interesting architecture and selling it on the streets,” she said. “When he lived in the Bay Area he would ride his bike around the Bay Area and set up an easel and paint China Town and Union Square.”
Cindy Putnam said she worries about her son and the possibility he is still suffering from anxiety.
“I wish he’d come home and paint again,” she said.
For more information about the search, visit the Find Robert Putnam Facebook page.
