HOST (intro): A woman goes missing in Houston, after a routine shift at work. Police have asked the public for help, but so far, there are no leads. Does anyone out there in Radio Silent land have any relevant information? Is there something we can do to help?
Listen up. Let’s try.
Almost a million people are reported missing across North America every year. If we pay attention, if we work together, maybe we can help bring some of them home.
I am the Seeker, and this is Radio Silent.
HOST: Earlier this week, I received an email from Carla Garcia, a woman in Houston, asking me to look into the disappearance of her friend Vanessa Rodriguez. Vanessa, twenty-one, was first reported missing four days ago, but friends say that she’s actually been missing for longer than that. She didn’t turn up for her shift at a busy diner six days ago, which her employer thought was strange, since she’d never missed a shift before. When multiple texts and calls to her cell phone went unanswered, they assumed she’d quit her job. Over the weekend, her family assumed that she was staying with her boyfriend, Johnny, but he was out of town visiting family in San Antonio.
RECORDING: (voice of Johnny) “I got back home around two or two thirty on Sunday. Vanessa and I had made plans for when I got back. You know, just hang out. She didn’t answer any of my texts, and when I tried calling, it went straight to voice mail. Finally, I went over to her place. She didn’t answer the door, so I let myself in—I have a key—and nobody was home. Nothing seemed weird or out of place, but I started to get a bad feeling. That’s when I got in touch with her mom, and when she said she hadn’t heard from Vanessa, that’s when we started to get real worried.”
HOST: Johnny and Vanessa’s mother began reaching out to her friends and family, which is when they realized that something was wrong.
RECORDING: (voice of Carla Garcia) “None of us had heard from her in two days. I’d last seen her at work earlier in the week. We’d made plans to grab an after-work drink on Friday, because we were working the same shift, but then she didn’t show up on Friday. It was weird because Vanessa never missed a shift at work. I texted her, but I didn’t hear back. I didn’t think a lot about it until I heard from Johnny on Sunday night. We went to the police and they told us we had to wait forty-eight hours to file a missing person report, even though none of us had seen her in over forty-eight hours. It was bullshit, but they said it was standard procedure. It was clear that they weren’t concerned, but we were concerned.
We were a lot more than concerned.
HOST: Carla and Johnny and Vanessa’s family immediately began a search of their own. Her phone was discovered underneath a mailbox a few blocks from her apartment, and when they finally gained access to her bank accounts, it turned out that they hadn’t been touched.
HOST: You all know why I’m here. I know why you’re all here. The world is full of missing people, and the sad truth is that many of them will never come home. But I believe there’s a story behind every missing person, and maybe, just maybe, if we begin to dig up the details together, we can find our way to a happy ending.
It might be too late for Vanessa. But what if it isn’t too late? What if she’s still out there, waiting somewhere, hoping that someone noticed something?
Maybe it was someone you know.
Maybe it was you.
Carla Garcia has been an incredible friend to Vanessa. She’s doing everything she can to help Vanessa’s family, her boyfriend, and her friends bring Vanessa home. She’s spearheaded a grassroots effort to turn over every stone. She reached out to me to see whether the LDA can help. She recorded the clips you heard on this episode, and she’s on the ground in Houston, willing to follow up any lead we can send her way.
I’ve put all of this information on our show page, including several photos of Vanessa.
I want to use this platform to tell you about Vanessa. I want to give her story the space it deserves.
Is there something you can do to help?
Listen up.
Let’s try.