Missing Moms: Ky. Woman's Sons Are 'Doing the Best They Can' 2 Years After Mom Disappeared

This week's issue of PEOPLE explores eight unsolved cases of missing moms, including Andrea Knabel, who vanished on Aug. 13, 2019, leaving behind her two sons

Photo: erin Knabel

Last month marked the two-year anniversary of the disappearance of Andrea Knabel, the Kentucky mother of two who vanished after walking home from her sister's house.

Knabel went missing on Aug. 13, 2019. She was last seen leaving her sister Erin's house early in the morning to make the mile-long walk back to their mother's Louisville home, where she was staying.

While Knabel's family continues searching for the 39-year-old, they are also making sure to help care for her sons, ages 8 and 10, who are living with their fathers.

"They're very strong boys and very bright," Erin Knabel says of her nephews in this week's issue of PEOPLE. "They're doing the best they can really, but they're very sad. They miss their mom."

Initially, police and Knabel's family believed the then–37-year-old disappeared while walking to her mother's house, however, a private investigator hired by Knabel's family discovered that her phone's GPS located her at her mother's home in the middle of the night.

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Her family now believes she may have gone back out, after getting home, to meet someone.

"What I'm worried has happened is that she got ahold of someone that she thought was her friend that really wasn't," Erin says.

For more information about Andrea Knabel and other missing mom cases, subscribe now to PEOPLE or pick up this week's issue, on newsstands Friday.

As Knabel's sons continue to grow up without their mother, her family hopes someone with information in her whereabouts comes forward. They run a Facebook page called Finding Andrea, which aims to keep the case on people's minds.

"I just hope that they can help end this for us," Erin says. "And any news is better than no news. If something bad has happened, something tragic, we need to know, but we're still hoping for a miracle that maybe she could be okay."

Anyone with information is urged to call Louisville police at 502-574-LMPD or private investigator Tracy Leonard at 502-618-9337.