When a young Illinois woman finishes a late-night shift at work, she banishes without a trace just steps from her home.

Investigators are certain her disappearance was a result of foul play, but evidence and answers are hard to come by in this episode of Last Seen Live.

I'm your host, Leah, crime analyst by day, and true crime storyteller by night.

And as always, I'm your co-host, Scott.

Veronica Bloomhurst was last seen alive on September 21st, 1990.

She was 21 years old at the time and lived in Mendota, Illinois.

Mendota is a small town, home to a few thousand people and located about an

hour and a half stride southwest of Chicago. Veronica had grown up in the area and lived with her parents

and younger brother. She'd been a part of the Bloomhurst family ever since they'd adopted her as a seven-month-old

infant. Okay. Her adoptive parents, Betty and Paul Bloomhurst, a professional elder care worker and a professional

firefighter, respectively, had also adopted another baby girl, Veronica's older sister, and

eventually had one biological child, Veronica's little brother.

Childhood had been a happy time for Veronica who dreamed of one day getting married

and having children of her own more than anything else. By the time Veronica was 21, she wasn't

married or engaged, but she was dating someone, a local guy named Jeff Rivera. He was 22, had studied

computer science at a local community college and was beginning his career in IT.

By September of 1990, he and Veronica had been dating for a little over a year and had begun discussing the possibility of marriage months beforehand.

So, things were fairly serious.

Okay.

Meanwhile, Veronica worked at a grocery store called Dempsey's Super Value.

The store was located just a few blocks away from her home, and she worked as a cashier,

mostly handling movie rentals and lottery ticket sales.

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