Ottawa Police have a sample of Zabina Perez's DNA — in case they ever come across the body of her mother, who vanished from Ottawa seven years ago.

Janice Matney was last seen March 27, 2002, at her apartment in the 200 block of State Street by her live-in companion, Ken Heermann, who told police several days later she had disappeared. The then 39-year-old Matney was from Sacramento, Calif., but moved around the country before landing in Ottawa. Matney has a daughter and son.

"She was a really generous, energetic person," the 26-year-old Perez remembered, saying she last saw her mother about one year before she went missing.

However, Matney also had a history of illegal drug use and depression, according to police. She never claimed a Social Security benefits check she had coming and never filed for benefits in another town. Heermann was a sex offender, who unsettled Perez a few years after the disappearance when he reached out to her in Sacramento, where she lives.

Perez said she never met Heermann, but he wrote letters to her and phoned, asking if she had seen her mother.

"I didn't feel comfortable," Perez recalled. "I believe he might have done something to her. Some foul play."

Heermann died of natural causes Aug. 16, 2004, in Ottawa. Police said polygraph tests were done on several people in the aftermath of the disappearance.

Ottawa Detective Sgt. Dave Gualandri said the Matney case is Ottawa's only unsolved missing person case still on the books, and tips still occasionally come to his desk.

A volunteer with the Doe Network, a Web site devoted to missing people, contacted Gualandri last fall with information a dead body had been found in O'Hara, Pa., that roughly matched Matney's description,. However, after investigation, Gualandri determined it was not her.

Another lead that went nowhere was a call last year from a California man on parole from prison who knew Matney and learned from online stories she had vanished. The man aroused suspicion, but Gualandri found he had been in jail when Matney disappeared.

Gualandri noted local leads have been "exhausted," but checks are periodically done on bodies found around the country. Police have preserved evidence in Matney's case. Anyone who knew Matney around the time of her disappearance or with other information should call Ottawa police at: 815-433-2131. She might have last been wearing a white sweatshirt, white T-shirt, yellow jogging pantswith blue pants over top, brown hiking boots, and a green-and-white jacket.

Matney's daughter plans to visit Ottawa in about six months to meet with police; the last time she did so was September 2007. She said she took the case to the television program "America's Most Wanted" and to a California-based foundation that helps publicize cases of missing people, but neither was interested, saying the Matney case did not meet their criteria.

"I don't want this to be another case that's cold and forgotten," she said. "It's really, really, really hard to live with. I think about it every day. We never had a service for her."