Serenity June Dennard would be 16 now, but her world stopped on a freezing February morning in 2019 when she vanished from the Black Hills Children’s Home near Rapid City, South Dakota. What began as a normal Sunday at a residential treatment facility turned into one of the most heartbreaking mysteries in the region’s recent history.
It was February 3, 2019, and Serenity was just 9 years old, a bright kid with blue eyes and dirty-blonde hair who loved animals, movies, and making friends. That morning, she and a few other children were inside the gym at the Black Hills Children’s Home when, suddenly, she slipped out into the cold without a coat or hat. The last confirmed sighting of her was around 11:00 a.m. as she walked along South Rockerville Road into the woods.
What followed was an immense search effort that captured the attention of law enforcement agencies and the local community. More than 1,500 people, including search teams, volunteers, helicopters, and cadaver dogs, combed miles of rugged forests and snow-covered terrain. They logged thousands of miles on foot, but no trace of Serenity was ever found.
From the beginning, questions hovered over how the situation was handled inside the facility. Investigators later revealed that staff did not call 911 until more than an hour after Serenity disappeared, and official reviews found shortcomings in how the home supervised children and reacted to the emergency. Those delays and missteps have haunted relatives and officials alike.
Serenity had been living at the Black Hills Children’s Home because her early years were filled with upheaval. She’d spent time in about a dozen foster homes after being removed from her biological parents as a toddler. Her adoptive family said she struggled emotionally and had run away before, but nothing on that day should have ended like this.
Despite extensive searches and more than 500 interviews with leads, the case remains unresolved. The Pennington County Sheriff’s Office continues to classify Serenity as missing and endangered. Her family holds onto the hope that someday there will be answers, and that someone might come forward with information about her disappearance.
Serenity’s story has touched hearts far beyond South Dakota. Community members share her age-progressed likeness online and on posters, urging everyone to keep her name alive. For her family, each year without news is both unbearable and fuel for hope—the kind that refuses to be extinguished, even in the face of tragedy.
