Stephany Welzien thumbs through a scrapbook dedicated to the last year of her son’s life.

The blue binder, organized mostly by a family friend, begins with a missing person flier displaying a familiar picture of 21-year-old Brian Welzien, along with an exact description of how he looked Jan. 1, 2000. That was the last time friends saw him alive outside the Omni Ambassador East Hotel in Chicago — 77 days before his body would be discovered along the Indiana shoreline.

When word got out that the NIU junior and Elgin native was missing after a New Year’s party, the search began. Volunteers blanketed the Chicago area with handbills, and media outlets around the country were quick to jump on Brian’s story, one of the first missing person cases of the New Year.

“I received about 20 pounds of letters after the first month he was gone,” Stephany Welzien said. “A lot of them were anonymous tips about what happened, and a lot of them were from people who have lost children. My eyes blurred reading them all.”

Newspapers and television depicted Brian as a smiling soccer player with sandy brown hair and brown eyes, last seen wearing a brown sweater, brown pants and brown shoes. Friends of the family kept up a Web site, www.findbrian.org, and wrote a song, the words of which are pasted in Stephany’s scrapbook.

“We sent about three or four people to more than 80 hospitals in Chicago and the surrounding areas,” Welzien said. “I never realized how many hospitals there were and how desperate you get looking at everyone who passes you by.”

Police received information from witnesses who said a night of drinking with friends Dec. 31 left Welzien inebriated. He attempted to tell friends who were parking the car that he was going to his room, but Welzien was last seen stumbling outside the hotel by the bellhop at 3:45 a.m.

Chicago police made several dives in the Lake Michigan waters surrounding the hotel and searched the immediate area where Welzien could have wandered off after he reportedly drank four Long Island iced teas the night of his disappearance. Some versions of the drink include about seven different liquors, such as tequila, triple sec, vodka, gin and rum.

“There are walkways that run from North Avenue to Division Street where we expect he crossed,” said John DeBartolo, a Chicago Missing Persons investigator who worked the case. “It’s not really weird, but puzzling. Everyone we spoke to related a different story about Brian, but friends and family always said he wasn’t a big drinker. If anything, he was more of a social drinker.”

Welzien’s body was found by a passerby near the water’s edge on Lake Street Beach in Indiana at 6 p.m. March 17.

“The autopsy found no evidence of foul play, and his blood-alcohol concentration was very high,” DeBartolo said. “The dates and time he disappeared and the currents of the water all contributed to the way he was lost and found.”

“But he was pretty well-intoxicated and pretty incoherent. The driver didn’t know him, and his good friends stayed at the bar. The bellhop of the hotel was the last positive identification we have of Brian, who was standing on a corner vomiting. He made his way toward the lake, in pitch black, probably to get some fresh air or sober up and fell in after that.”

Stephany Welzien remembers the exact moment Chicago police investigators rang her doorbell on Friday, March 17. She felt the breath knocked out of her body when investigators told her her Brian’s body had washed ashore near Gary, Ind.

“I just stood there, motionless,” Welzien said. “It was like time had stopped all of a sudden, and there was just me, alone, at that very moment. I remember what John was wearing, what I was wearing, that the wind literally knocked me over when I opened the door.”

Brian was found with his ID and all his money. He was still wearing the same brown clothes.

“I can’t explain the feeling,” Stephany Welzien said. “You just know. I was at the point where I was desperate for any kind of information, but obviously you can’t prepare yourself for something like this.”

After ruling out foul play and suicide, Brian’s death was determined accidental.

Hundreds of people attended his funeral and wake two days after he was found. Media outlets from all over the country were allowed to photograph the funeral. Most of the newspaper clippings in the scrapbook show a teary-eyed, disheveled Stephany Welzien alone by her son’s grave.

“Part of me died with him,” she said. “It really smacks you in the head when you’re standing there alone, surrounded by friends and family who are crying.”

Welzien’s husband, Rick, died of a heart attack nearly a year before Brian. Although his father died in his sleep, it was hard for Brian to accept.

“Losing a husband and a child makes you wonder why you were put on this earth to have things so precious taken away from you,” Welzien said. “It’s hard to remind yourself to have faith in God when your whole world falls at your feet.”

It’s hard for her to see parents and children she meets as a teacher outside of Elgin.

“Brian was my last link, my last hope,” she said. “Now I think about never seeing him married or having grandkids. I’ve spent holidays with friends rather than family because sometimes it’s too hard.”

Welzien set to establish an NIU scholarship in Brian’s name but was shocked to hear that the Gary man who claims he found the body may file a lawsuit to recover more than $20,000 in reward money.

Stephany Welzien gave the man $2,500 after Brian was found, an amount he asked for. She initially offered him all the reward money even though police had received about a dozen claims of who had found her son.

While lawyers battle the fight before a trial, Stephany Welzien quickly points out a page in the scrapbook displaying a letter from U.S. House Dennis Hastert, of Yorkville. It congratulates her for helping to pass Kristen’s Act, a law providing federal funding to law enforcement and other agencies in the search for missing adults.

The law was named after Kristen Modaffery, who was reported missing just three weeks after her 18th birthday. Kristen’s Act establishes a national database for missing adults, as well as additional funding, said Kym Pasqualini, president of the Nation’s Missing Children Organization and Center for Missing Adults in Arizona.

“When people think of a missing person, they usually think of a young child,” Pasqualini said. “But so many adults are listed as missing every year. Someone’s spouse, a brother or another relative. The families suffer the same trauma as if it were a child.”

“We couldn’t have done it without each family involved. It’s through their loss that this law was passed. I haven’t suffered a loss like that, but these families were motivated to do something. For Stephany, it’s in her child’s name that this is possible.”

It’s another page in the tightly-packed scrapbook Stephany Welzien closes. Almost a year later, she’s still filling the book with cards and letters from people she doesn’t even know.

She’s rearranged Brian’s room to accommodate a Southwestern-themed watercolor painting of her son and her husband. Taken from old photographs, the picture reminds her of her past. But the pictures in her blue binder remind her of why she has to move on.

“My faith in God gets me through the days when nothing seems right,” she said. “I’ve questioned everything that’s happened over and over, but since the passage of Kristen’s Law, it almost feels like there’s reason to God’s plan. I’ll never come to terms with what happened to Brian, and neither will anyone else I know. He was loved by so many people.”