Mystery Down Highway 1

Tucked between the Pacific and the mountains on California's central coast, Big Sur is a 90-mile stretch of breathtaking beauty.

It's been like a scary movie since the day it happened. Like it's just been a nightmare. And we pray every night that she comes home.

Veronica Garcia and Ellie Mendoza are Areli's sisters. Is there any reason why your sister would be in Big Sur?

No idea. It's still a mystery to this day.

A mystery that, to Areli's family and others, sounds eerily similar to another case.

They're both young, you know, they're both women of color. They both went missing at the same area. It is very shady, for sure.

I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Dateline Missing in America. Today's episode is Mystery Down Highway 1..

We are seven siblings in total.

And where is she in the middle of all this?

She's the little one.

She's the youngest?

She's the baby.

That's Areli's sister, Ellie, again. The baby of the family. So, uh, so she kind of looked up to all of you. Yeah.

She had a lot of sisters to look up to, and, you know, and anytime she needed, like, help, she would ask us.

Veronica and Ellie told me, the three of them are especially close.

Hola!

Hola!

That's obvious in videos they've recorded.

Tell me, I don't look like evil Ariel, like when Ursula turns into fake Ariel.

That was Areli doing an impression from The Little Mermaid. With her long, thick hair and dramatic pose, she definitely nailed it. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Her sisters say Areli loved to make others laugh.

She's just very funny, very hardworking. She's always helping someone.

After high school, Areli got certified as an automotive specialist and hit the job market.

She was very busy. She was working full-time at a car dealership, my Chevy. She was the service advisor there.

Now, for Areli, cars weren't just a job. They were an obsession. She belonged to a car club, and in her free time, she went to car shows, where she sometimes showed off her customized 2013 Honda Accord. It was silver when Areli bought it, but it didn't stay that way for long.

She got it wrapped a really bright red, so everybody in town knew it was her when they would see the car pass by.

Really red? Yeah, really, really red.

I actually helped her with the color. She had two in mind.

Yeah, that's a color not found in nature or anywhere else, I don't think.

Yeah, for sure.

All right, I mean, that's past fire engine red. That's some other shade.

Yeah, for sure.

According to her sisters, Areli doted on that Honda.

That was pretty much her baby, her car. You never saw it dirty, you know? That was her everything.

Okay, maybe not quite everything. Let's talk about your sister and Starbucks.

She would spend like half her paycheck at Starbucks. She would get it every, every day. Like every morning, she would get her co-workers Starbucks. She got my sister into Starbucks.

She went there every day.

She went there every day.

She was keeping Starbucks in business.

She was doing really good. She would get really good grades.

Areli shared an apartment with their mom. It was close to work and to Areli's gym, a big plus when it came to juggling her busy schedule.

She would pretty much work out in the mornings, head to work, come back, do her schoolwork, and then do the same thing again the next morning.

On September 22nd, 2022, Areli texted Veronica just before 7 a.

And I just replied saying, I miss you too, love you. And I went in with my morning.

Around 10 a.

I'm like, I literally just texted her an hour ago. And that's when I noticed that the message didn't go through, like it never delivered. And so I started texting her like crazy.

Suddenly, Areli wasn't answering texts or calls from either of her sisters.

Like, over 30 calls, no answer. Our hearts started racing. for sure. We knew something was wrong then.

Areli was not somebody who was late to work.

No, she was always on time. She would be involved with all her co-workers. So everybody pretty much knew, like, everyone's day. They would text throughout the day.

So if she'd made some plan that required her to not be at work on time, she would have told her co-workers.

Oh, yes, definitely.

Veronica and Allie drove over to the apartment Areli shared with their mom to see if they could find any answers there. Everything looked normal in Areli's room. There was no note, and nothing was out of place.

So then I logged into my iPhone, the app, and that's where I saw. her location was a Big Sur.

That didn't make any sense. Big Sur is more than an hour's drive from Salinas. Why would Areli drive so far when she had to be at work by 7.30?. Is there any reason why your sister would be in Big Sur?

No idea.

By now, morning had turned to late afternoon, and worry was turning to panic. Veronica and her husband went to the Salinas police station to file a missing persons report, while Allie and her husband headed to Big Sur. Tell me what you and your husband are thinking on that drive.

Well, we are just wondering, first of all, what is she doing over there at that time in the morning? Second of all, who is she meeting, if she really was planning to go that far?

As they drove south on Highway 1, they spotted a bright red splash of color in the distance. Areli's Honda was parked in a pull-off where people stopped to take pictures. They pulled up behind it. The Honda was locked, and it was empty.

She's not there.

And were there other people there at the time?

No, there was nobody. Just her car? Yes, just her car, locked. And the first thing I noticed was that it wasn't parked the usual way she normally has it.

Areli had customized her Honda with an air suspension system that could raise and lower its chassis. Her sisters say, whenever she parked, she lowered the car all the way to the ground. In car slang, that's called slamming. On that morning, the Honda wasn't slammed. Suggesting that she was not the person who parked the car.

Correct, exactly.

Somebody else was driving her car.

Yeah.

If that was true, who was that person, and had Areli gone with them willingly? A video showing Areli earlier that morning was about to provide a tantalizing clue. She would not have gone to work wearing those clothes?

No, no, definitely not.

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We'll find people who have driven off the road, either accidentally or intentionally. We'll get somebody who will stop and exit their car to look over a cliff to get a view of the ocean. They might stumble and fall. In this case, there were no cliffs or hills. where her car was found.

Detective Wilson says, when deputies arrived, it was already dark, so they launched drones to help them. look for Arely.

The drones that we use are well-equipped for searching at night. They have infrared cameras. They can detect body heat, and there was no indication that she was anywhere in that area.

The next day, they resumed their search in daylight. Arely's car was parked near the Little Sur River Bridge. Detective Wilson says unlike much of Big Sur, that is not an area that sees a lot of hikers. For two days, search teams scoured the area for Arely using drones, helicopters, and planes.

We essentially searched four miles north of where her car was found and four miles south of where her car was found. So every cove, every beach, every trail, every turnoff, everything was searched, and there was no indication of Arely.

In a search like that, obviously you're looking for a person, or maybe their body. What other kinds of things do you look for?

We would look for anything that appeared to be freshly dropped. It could be as simple as a candy wrapper. We'll look for footprints. We'll look for broken branches. None of that was seen.

Detective Wilson told me the searchers used both cadaver dogs and regular search dogs that look for people who are injured or lost. Those dogs have helped you find a lot of missing people.

They have.

This time, they found no trace of Arely, and that raised a whole new set of questions.

To me as a search and rescue team member and as a detective, it just indicates that she didn't remain in the area where her car was found.

So then, where did Arely go and how did she leave? Maybe her precious Honda held answers. Investigators had the car towed and processed. Because it's an active investigation, they won't say what, if any evidence they recovered. They did confirm the driver's seat was pushed back farther than where 5'5 Arely usually had it.

She was not dressed for work.

You're both confident. she would never have worn that outfit to work.

She would have gotten sent home for sure. Yeah, at least that's who I'm here.

When you see her leaving the house like that, that's what, attire for the gym or what?

It's definitely a gym attire, but the time was just not making sense. She would usually go to the gym around five in the morning, I would say, 5, 5.30 in the morning.

The time the video was recorded, 6.

So there was no way like in 30 minutes. she was gonna do what she usually does like in an hour and a half.

Meaning not nearly enough time for Arely to work out, shower, change, and be at work on time. So you think there's a chance that she was going to meet someone?

There might be a chance, yeah. We have no idea with who, but there's a chance.

There's another video, one police have not released, and that holds a second clue. Detectives believe that video shows Arely's Honda passing a general store in a beach town in Big Sur around 7.30 a.m. Her sisters say that is not where she should be at that hour. So whatever she's doing, whether she's driving or somebody else, that's not the way to work.

Oh, no, definitely not. She only lives like 10 minutes away from work.

Selena's police told us they believe Arely's Honda reached the location where it was found between 7.

They had just started dating for a couple months. We reached out to him the day that she went missing, and he didn't know anything.

Police searched Arely's electronic devices and told us there's been no activity on her bank accounts since her disappearance. They said Arely's new boyfriend was one of the several dozen people they interviewed, along with her coworkers at the car dealership. She ever tell you she was having trouble with anybody there?

No, well, she would just say she was stressed out. You know, customers can be very hard to deal with sometimes. You know, the customer's always right kind of thing.

She never told either one of you that she was afraid of anyone, worried about anyone, thought somebody was following her, nothing like that?

No, nothing like that.

It's not a stretch to imagine that Arely, driving around Salinas in her practically pristine Dayglo red Honda, probably attracted a lot of attention. If you wanted to follow her, or if you wanted to know where she was, that car would probably help you.

Yes. Oh, yes, definitely. Which is also kind of scary.

Arely's car may have attracted attention off the road as well. Her Instagram account is filled with photos of her beloved Honda. And in many of them, Arely is posing beside it. One photo that's not in her Instagram account is apparently the last photo taken of the Honda. And how that came about is one of the surprising coincidences in this story.

Every time she would park it, she would lower it all the way down. And the way the car was parked, like it was still lifted.

As days became weeks, the investigation seemed to stall. Arely's family organized their own searches and did all they could to keep attention on her case. They created a website, posted on social media and urged local media to cover her story. And in November, frustrated with investigators after Arely had been missing almost two months, they held a protest outside the Salinas Police Station. It was small, mostly family and close friends, holding signs that read, bring Arely home.

They were gonna leave us in the dark. We weren't sure what was going on.

In December, 2022, with Christmas approaching, NBC affiliate KSBW interviewed the Salinas Police spokesman, Commander Brian Johnson. He had a message for Arely's family. I would tell the family that we're searching hard, we're working, we understand the sadness that you're feeling. And of course, we wanna find her just as much as you do. We're investigating it the best that we can, with the resources that we have, trying to find any sort of indication of where she might be.

Bring Arely home! Bring Arely home! Bring Arely home! What's her name? Arely Garcia!

The protesters marched to Salinas City Hall, where council members were meeting. When the floor opened for public comment, some of Arely's family members spoke, including Arely's niece, Alma Michelle Marquez.

We want answers. Arely could be your daughter, your sister, your mom, and, in my case, my aunt. How many more women need to go missing for Salinas Police Department to respond to our cries for help?

I really credit the family with bringing a lot of attention and sustained attention to this case.

That's Sarah Rubin, editor of the Monterey County Weekly. She's worked at the paper for more than 13 years and says Arely's case stands out from the other missing cases she's covered.

Time continued to pass. There was no resolution. There were, from what we could tell, no additional leads. And the family was so invested in pushing her story and made themselves very available to us for interviews. That made it different.

Arely's relatives were doing everything they could to make sure she wasn't forgotten. At the same time, they were running into a hard truth about the realities of police work and how difficult it is for departments to pursue missing persons cases with limited staffing. The priorities of the family and the police are almost never the same. in this situation. The family isn't thinking about anything else.

Yeah, and the Salinas Police Department is in a position of understaffing, where they have developed a prioritization system for calls that come in, in which they are not responding to all calls. They say that it's simply not possible for them. So a case in which they say they've run down all their leads long ago and they're not getting new leads, this is not a priority for them. I don't think they would represent it otherwise.

We asked the lead detective in Arely's case if that's accurate. He told us that while he hasn't received many tips, all tips related to Arely's case get routed to him and he handles them as a top priority.

I agree with you, absolutely.

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And for that family, the news ended really tragically.

On August 30th, 2022, Kaylee's body was found in Big Sur, about 200 yards from Highway 1, less than a month before Arely's car was found abandoned in Big Sur on Highway 1.

At this point, we're not sure. to be honest. I mean, they're both young, you know? They're both women of color. They both went missing at the same area.

The Monterey County Sheriff's Office is investigating Kaylee's homicide. And the lead detective is someone you heard from earlier in this podcast, Aris Wilson. He's the detective who described the search as his fellow deputies conducted for Arely. These are both young women of color and they both disappeared from the area around Salinas. You had to examine, law enforcement had to examine whether or not these cases could possibly be related.

We did.

And so far you haven't found anything.

Correct. I don't like saying absolutely, there's no way they were connected or absolutely they were connected. What I do is I look for evidence and I've seen no evidence that there's a connection between these two cases.

How is the case dissimilar? How are those cases not alike?

I would have to go into specifics.

Don't wanna do that.

I can't do that.

Because Kaylee's case is an active homicide investigation, Detective Wilson wouldn't discuss certain details, including when investigators believe Kaylee was killed and whether she died at the location where they found her.

I can't go into specifics, but regarding the Kaylee Gamble investigation, we do have a significant amount of evidence.

According to Detective Wilson, Kaylee was last seen walking away from her apartment in Salinas on the night of August 17th. 13 days later, someone called 911 to report they'd spotted a body on the coast in Big Sur. Where exactly was her body found?

There was a turnout on the west side of the road of Highway 1 and there was a very steep cliff on the other side of this turnout, and her body was found at the bottom of that cliff.

As if somebody had pulled off the road and maybe thrown her body over the side.

That's all part of our investigation.

Any person of interest or suspects in the Kaylee Gamble case?

I can't answer that.

Although the Sheriff's office helped with the searches for Arely, her case is being investigated by the Salinas Police. They told Dateline and Arely's family that they have ruled out a connection between the two cases. Arely's Honda was found more than 25 miles north of where Kaylee's body was found and from investigators' perspective, that distance alone may argue against the cases being connected. And there is one giant difference between the cases. Kaylee was found.

It's a case-by-case situation, but generally speaking, we do find people when they go missing, or we at least find out through the investigation what happened to them.

Sarah Rubin from the Monterey County Weekly says the fact that Arely hasn't been found is sadly one of the reasons her story is newsworthy. She can recall only one other case like that in Monterey County that remains unsolved.

A hiker who disappeared in Big Sur and was never discovered. Otherwise, every missing person case that I am aware of has been solved at some point.

Hi, lovey. I just wanna say happy birthday and I hope you get better and I love you.

Three months before her disappearance, Arely recorded a birthday video for Veronica, who was ill and couldn't go out to celebrate.

And I will see you soon, so I can give you your gifts and let me know if you need anything, and I miss you and enjoy your day.

This is not a pleasant question to ask either of you. You think your sister's still alive?

Yes. Yes. We believe it in our hearts that she's still out there somewhere, for sure.

You think someone has her locked up somewhere?

Probably at this point, because it's just incredible how there's no signs at all. Nobody knows nothing, nobody saw nothing. So it has to be that.

You think there are witnesses out there that know things that aren't saying?

Oh, yes, for sure. Yeah, definitely. There's definitely someone. It takes one person to come forward and maybe they're scared.

Maybe they don't realize that the information they have is as significant as it might be.

Yes, exactly.

On July 22nd, 2023, 10 months after Arely's disappearance, her family celebrated her 26th birthday. It was a way to keep her memory and their hope alive. Happy birthday, dear Aunt Arely.

Happy birthday to you.

Arely's godson, Davian, sang with gusto and blew out the candles on his aunt's cake. He was three when Arely went missing. Veronica and Ellie make a point of showing him pictures of her, so he doesn't forget his godmother.

Because we know she's gonna come back one day. Yeah, my son still asks for her to this day. We pray together every night.

I really hope those prayers are answered for both of you. Thank you. I really do. Maybe this will do a little bit of good.

I hope so.

Here's where you can help. Arely Garcia is 5'5", about 150 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a black hoodie and black leggings. You can see photos of Arely and her car on our website, including the Google Maps image of her Honda parked on Highway 1 in Big Sur. You can also see that video showing her leaving her apartment on September 22nd, 2022..