‘I just want her back safe and sound’

Mother of missing North Branch Township girl pleads that she return home.

NORTH BRANCH TOWNSHIP – Christin Swenson’s Christmas presents are still sitting under the tree as her family waits for her to return home.
The 17-year-old North Branch High School senior has been missing since Monday, Dec. 22, 2008.
The latest tip authorities have is that she’s in Florida.
Isanti County investigators have tracked her via ATM transactions from Kansas to Texas.
“It’s like a nightmare I’m not waking up from,” said Christin’s mother, Mary Swenson.
She calls her daughter’s cell phone every day, and tells her this: “You’re not in trouble. It’s not your fault. You’ve got so much to lose. We want you back, and we love you.”
Christin is the youngest of Mary and Larry’s three children. Her brother, Jonathan, has been stationed in Iraq since June 2008. Mary admitted it’s hard to hold it together over the holidays with two children absent.
“I’m trying to stay strong and keep moving on,” stated Mary.
Teen worked in Red Wing, went to school in North Branch
According to the Isanti County Sheriff’s department, Swenson contacted her family at 8 p.m. on Monday night, Dec. 22, 2008 and stated she was on her way home from Red Wing. She never arrived.
Swenson had been renting a room in Red Wing from a girl friend on the weekends to work at an Econofoods there. When she wasn’t working at the grocery store, she was helping her cousin Wade Swenson with his three children, who range from age five to 15, according to her mother.
She would return to North Branch to attend class at North Branch High School on the weekdays. Swenson has four credits left before earning her high school diploma, and was set to graduate early in March, noted her mother.
Because of the ice on Monday, Dec. 22, her mother told her to stay in Red Wing until the roads cleared up. Mary talked to her daughter several times that day, and believed that she had agreed to work a shift at Econofoods for a friend.
Mary confirmed that her daughter had been questioned in regard to a crime in Pierce County, Wis. the week before her disappearance. She wishes Christin would have come to her with any problems she was facing.
“I just want her back safe and sound,” Mary said.
Call with information on whereabouts
Swenson is a white female, is 5.5 feet tall and weighs 105 pounds. She has long blond hair and brown eyes, and may have dyed her hair.
She was last seen driving a pewter-colored 2000 Chevrolet Malibu with the license number UGA376.
Authorities speculate that she may be with her cousin, Wade Swenson, who is wanted on several warrants unrelated to this incident.
Anyone who has seen Swenson is urged to contact the sheriff’s department at 763-689-2141.