Owner of CdA stereo store reported missing

Police are looking for a Coeur d’Alene business owner who failed to show up for dinner with a co-worker Friday and didn’t arrive for work the next day.

Employees from J and D Stereo reported 49-year-old Dale F. Nelson missing Sunday.

Nelson was last seen driving a red 1999 Honda Civic with dealer plates, police said Monday. The license plate may include the numbers 1556.

Employee George Booth told police that he and Nelson left work in separate cars around 5:30 p.m. Friday. Booth said Nelson was going to drop off mail at the Coeur d’Alene post office, then meet him at Eduardo’s Restaurant for dinner, police said.

After waiting 45 minutes at the restaurant for Nelson to show up, Booth said he left.

The next day, Nelson didn’t show up for work.

Booth and another employee, Roger Laplant, told police that Nelson typically calls if he isn’t going to come in to the office. They said they were concerned because Nelson had a medical condition.

Coeur d’Alene police Sgt. Christie Wood said she couldn’t comment on the medical condition because of privacy issues.

Nelson has owned J and D Stereo since 1978. His brother, John Nelson, was a partner in the business until he was killed in a car accident in 1996.

The Spokesman-Review reported in 1999 that Dale Nelson was suing a mini-storage business, claiming that $340,000 in cash he had stored there was stolen.

In a letter to the judge in that case, Nelson said that the money was his “life savings” and that he had stored much of it in a stereo box, stacked in 30 $10,000 bundles. There was also a black garbage bag of smaller denominations stashed in a large garbage can, he said at the time.

The two locks used to secure the storage unit were cut off in February 1997, and the money was taken. Police caught the thieves, but they only had some of the money. About $232,000 remained missing.

Nelson last was seen wearing black pants and a gray T-shirt. Police are asking anyone with information on his location to call (208) 769-2320 or the Coeur d’Alene Police Tip Line at (208) 769-2296.