Loved ones of Robert Foster pray for miracle as missing boater search continues at Lake Michigan near 63rd St. Beach

In Chicago, Robert Foster has been missing in Lake Michigan for two days after he jumped into the water on the South Side of the city.

And while, for search purposes, this is now a recovery mission, his loved ones are still hoping for a miracle.

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They said they are largely in the dark about what is and isn’t being done to find him.

“I don’t have a body. He’s a fighter,” mother Geraldine Armstrong said.

Foster loved being out on Lake Michigan.

On Saturday afternoon, he, his fiancée and four others launched his pontoon boat from Jackson Park Harbor. But, just minutes in, things went wrong.

“We were not even at 63rd beach when it happened. We were near the wall, just chatting, and he was about to play some music when the gas can suddenly popped off,” said his fiancée Charlene Lawrence.

A confident swimmer, Lawrence said Foster jumped into the water after it.

“He immediately jumped up, and took off his shirt, jumped up, unzipped his life vest. He was like, ‘I need to get that. We need that,” Lawrence said.

Within minutes, Foster was in distress.

The high waves made it impossible for him to get back to the boat, which, without an anchor, was drifting farther and farther out into Lake Michigan.

The fire department responded promptly, with divers entering the water within 16 minutes of the 911 call. Despite using the helicopter’s camera and heat sensing equipment, the search was challenging due to the lack of an exact location to focus on.

Two other divers from a rescue boat that had been sent to help those still stranded on the pontoon also made an attempt.

“They put on their diving gear, and jumped into the water. But, in the midst of them trying to find him, there was another rescue that they had to go. They had to stop looking for him,” Lawrence said.

According to the fire department, by that time it had been around 90 minutes since Foster first went into the water, reclassifying the search from a rescue to a recovery, which turns the responsibility over to the police department’s marine unit.

All of this, however, is of little consolation to Lawrence or to Foster’s mother, who lived with her son.

“That’s my only son. That’s my only child. We’ve been together. He said, ‘mom, I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to take care of you forever,'” Armstrong said.

The police department’s marine unit said they conducted a sight and sonar search Monday morning, and were going to go out again later in the day.