Play the episode “Mystery Down Highway 1” of the Dateline: Missing in America podcast below and click here to follow.
Read the transcript here:
Tucked between the Pacific and the mountains on California’s Central Coast, Big Sur is a 90-mile stretch of breathtaking beauty.
The author Henry Miller said, “It was here in Big Sur that I first learned to say ‘amen.’”
To see what he was talking about, you’ll need to brave Highway 1. Its two lanes wind above steep cliffs, with waves crashing below. There are places to pull off to soak in the views. It’s the vista of a hundred TV commercials.
On September 22, 2022, something happened here that you’ll never see on any postcard of this slice of paradise. On that morning, a bright red Honda Accord cruised south down Highway 1 and pulled over just past mile marker 56. Who was in the car and what happened before and after that moment... are questions that haunt a family.
The Honda belonged to 25-year-old Arelie Garcia and she hasn’t been seen or heard from since that morning.
Veronica Garcia: “It’s been like a scary movie since the day it happened. Like, it’s just been a nightmare.”
Elizet Mendoza: “And we pray every night that she comes home.”
Veronica Garcia and Eli Mendoza are Arelie’s sisters.
Josh Mankiewicz: “Is there any reason why your sister would be in Big Sur?”
Veronica Garcia: “No idea. It’s still a mystery to this day.”
A mystery that, to Arelie’s family and others, sounds eerily similar to another case.
Veronica Garcia: “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 first covered Arelie’s story in September 2023. Her family was desperate to find Arelie then -- and they’re still searching for her.
Please listen closely because you or someone you know might have information that could help solve this case and give Arelie’s family the answers they’re looking for.
Salinas, California sits about 50 miles north of Big Sur, and proudly bills itself as the Salad Bowl of the World. The miles of farmland surrounding the city are an economic engine, but not so much a tourist destination. It’s where Arelie Garcia grew up in a big, close-knit family. She and her sister Veronica are two years apart.
Veronica Garcia: “We are seven siblings in total.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “And where is she in the middle of all this?”
Veronica Garcia: “She’s the little one.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “She’s the youngest?”
Elizet Mendoza: “She’s the baby.”
That’s Arelie’s sister Eli, again.
Josh Mankiewicz: “The baby of the family. So, uh, so she kinda looked up to all of you?”
Veronica Garcia: “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 Eli told me the three of them are especially close.
Arelie Garcia: “Hola!”
Eli Mendoza: “Hola!”
That’s obvious in videos they’ve recorded.
Arelie Garcia: “Tell me I don’t look like evil Ariel, like when Ursula turns into fake Ariel.”
That was Arelie doing an impression from “The Little Mermaid.” With her long thick hair and dramatic pose, she definitely nailed it.
Her sisters say Arelie loved to make others laugh.
Veronica Garcia: “She’s just very funny, very hardworking. She’s always helping someone.”
After high school, Arelie got certified as an automotive specialist, and hit the job market.
Veronica Garcia: “She was very busy. She was working full-time at a car dealership, My Chevy. She was the service adviser there.”
Now, for Arelie, 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 Arelie bought it, but it didn’t stay that way for long.
Veronica Garcia: “She got it wrapped a really bright red, so everybody in town knew it was her when they would see the car pass by.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Really red.”
Veronica Garcia: “Yeah, really, really red. I actually helped her with the color. She had two in mind.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Yeah. That’s a -- that’s a color not found in nature or anywhere else, I don’t think. Yeah.”
Veronica Garcia: “Yeah, for sure.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “All right. I mean, that’s past fire engine red. That’s some other shade.”
Veronica Garcia: “Yeah, for sure.”
According to her sisters, Arelie doted on that Honda.
Veronica Garcia: “That was pretty much her baby, her car. You never saw it dirty, you — you know? That was her everything.”
OK, maybe not quite everything.
Josh Mankiewicz: “Let’s talk about your sister and Starbucks.”
Veronica Garcia: “She would spend like half her paycheck at Starbucks. She would get it every — every day. Like, every morning, she would get her coworkers Starbucks. She got my sister into Starbucks.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “She went there every day?”
Veronica Garcia: “She went there every day.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “She was keeping Starbucks in business?”
Veronica Garcia: “Yeah.”
As much as she loved her coworkers and her cars, Arelie was planning a career change. Veronica says she was taking online classes at a community college, studying to become an ultrasound technician. She was looking forward to starting classes in person.
Veronica Garcia: “She was doing really good. She would get really good grades.”
Arelie shared an apartment with their mom. It was close to work and to Arelie’s gym, a big plus when it came to juggling her busy schedule.
Veronica Garcia: “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 22, 2022, Arelie texted Veronica just before 7 a.m., saying, “Good morning. I miss you and my baby. Love you!”
The baby is Veronica’s son, Davian. Arelie is his godmother.
Veronica was still asleep and saw the text almost two hours later.
Veronica Garcia: “And I just replied saying, ‘I miss you too, love you.’ And I went on with my morning.”
Around 10 a.m., Veronica got a call from Eli. One of Arelie’s co-workers was wondering where Arelie was — because she hadn’t shown up for work.
Veronica Garcia: “I’m like, ‘I literally just texted her, like, 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, Arelie wasn’t answering texts or calls from either of her sisters.
Veronica Garcia: “Like, over 30 calls — no answer. Our hearts started racing, for sure. We knew something was wrong then.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Arelie was not somebody who was late to work.”
Veronica Garcia: “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.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “So if she’d made some plan that required her to not be at work on time, she would’ve told her coworkers.”
Veronica Garcia: “Oh yes, definitely.”
Elizet Mendoza: “Mm-hmm.”
Veronica and Eli drove over to the apartment Arelie shared with their mom to see if they could find any answers there. Everything looked normal in Arelie’s room. There was no note and nothing was out of place.
Veronica Garcia: “So then I logged into Find My iPhone — the app — and that’s where I saw her location was in Big Sur.”
That didn’t make any sense. Big Sur is more than an hour’s drive from Salinas. Why would Arelie drive so far when she had to be at work by 7:30?
Josh Mankiewicz: “Is there any reason why your sister would be in Big Sur?”
Veronica Garcia: “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 Eli and her husband headed to Big Sur.
Josh Mankiewicz: “Tell me what you’re — what you and your husband are thinking on that drive.”
Elizet Mendoza: “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. Arelie’s Honda was parked in a pull-off where people stop to take pictures. They pulled up behind it.
The Honda was locked, and it was empty.
Josh Mankiewicz: “She’s not there.”
Elizet Mendoza: “She’s not there.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “And were there other people there at the time?”
Elizet Mendoza: “No, there was nobody. However —”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Just her car?”
Elizet Mendoza: “Yes, just her car — locked. And the first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t parked the usual way she normally has it.”
Arelie 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.
Josh Mankiewicz: “Suggesting that she was not the person who parked the car.”
Elizet Mendoza: “Correct.”
Veronica Garcia: “Exactly.”
Elizet Mendoza: “Yeah.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Somebody else was driving her car.”
Elizet Mendoza: “Yeah.”
If that was true, who was that person, and had Arelie gone with them willingly? A video showing Arelie earlier that morning was about to provide a tantalizing clue.
Josh Mankiewicz: “She would not have gone to work wearing those clothes.”
Elizet Mendoza: “No.”
Veronica Garcia: “No, definitely not.”
Veronica Garcia reported her sister Arelie missing on September 22, 2022. She also gave Salinas police a huge clue: She had located Arelie’s car in Big Sur using her phone’s tracking app. At that location, officers found Arelie’s wallet, keys, and phone inside her Honda, but no sign of Arelie... and no obvious signs of foul play.
Deputies from the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office were also dispatched to the scene. The two agencies often assist each other and, unlike the police department, the Sheriff’s Office has a search and rescue team. Detective Arras Wilson is a senior member of that team. He knows the area — and its dangers.
Arras Wilson: “We’ll find people who, um, have driven off the road either accidentally or intentionally. Um, we’ll get somebody who will stop and exit their car, um, to look over a cliff to get a view of the ocean. They might stumble and fall. In this case, um, there were no cliffs or hills where her car was found. It was relatively flat. There was a lot of thick underbrush, but it wasn’t, uh, a cliffside area where there was a fall risk.”
Detective Wilson says when deputies arrived it was already dark, so they launched drones to help them look for Arelie.
Arras Wilson: “The drones that we use are — 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. Arelie’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 Arelie using drones, helicopters and planes.
Arras Wilson: “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, um, every beach, every trail, every turnoff, everything was searched — and there was no indication of Arelie.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “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?”
Arras Wilson: “We would look for anything that appeared to be freshly dropped. It could be as simple as a candy wrapper. Um, 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.
Josh Mankiewicz: “Those dogs have helped you find a lot of missing people.”
Arras Wilson: “They have.”
This time, they found no trace of Arelie — and that raised a whole new set of questions.
Arras Wilson: “To me, as a search and rescue team member and as a detective, it just indicates that, um, she didn’t remain in the area where her car was found.”
So then where did Arelie 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” Arelie usually had it.
Two big clues helped them piece together a timeframe for Arelie’s movements.
Police released a clip of security footage showing Arelie leaving her apartment at 6:34 on the morning of her disappearance and driving away in her Honda. In that video, she is clearly alone. She’s wearing black leggings, a black hoodie, and sneakers. Her hair is pulled back in a bun.
When Arelie’s sisters saw that footage, something immediately stood out to them.
Josh Mankiewicz: “She wasn’t dressed for work.”
Elizet Mendoza: “No.”
Veronica Garcia: “She was not dressed for work.”
Elizet Mendoza: “Mm-mm.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “You’re both — you’re both confident she would never have worn that outfit to work.”
Elizet Mendoza: “Oh, no.”
Veronica Garcia: “She would have gotten sent home, for sure.”
Elizet Mendoza: “She always does her hair.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “When you see her leaving the house like that, that’s what — attire for the gym, or what?”
Veronica Garcia: “Yes, it’s definitely a gym attire — but the time was just not making sense. She would usually go to the gym around 5:00 in the morning, I would say. 5:00, 5:30 in the morning.”
The time the video was recorded — 6:34 am — is significant, because Arelie had to be at work by 7:30.
Veronica Garcia: “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 Arelie to work out, shower, change and be at work on time.
Josh Mankiewicz: “So you think there’s a chance that she was going to meet someone?”
Veronica Garcia: “There might be a slight chance, yeah.
Elizet Mendoza: “We have no idea with who, but —”
Veronica Garcia: “Yeah.”
Elizet Mendoza: “— there’s a chance.”
There’s another video — one police have not released — and that holds a second clue.
Detectives believe that video shows Arelie’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.
Josh Mankiewicz: “So whatever she’s doing, whether she’s driving or somebody else, that’s — that’s not the way to work.”
Veronica Garcia: “Oh, no. Definitely not. She only lives like 10 minutes away from work.”
Salinas police told us they believe Arelie’s Honda reached the location where it was found between 7:50 and 8:45 that morning. That spot is about a 20-minute drive from the general store. According to the lead detective, the car in that video had tinted windows, making it difficult to see who was inside.
Was someone with Arelie in the Honda? Veronica says Arelie had a new boyfriend, a photographer she met at a car show.
Veronica Garcia: “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 Arelie’s electronic devices and told us there’s been no activity on her bank accounts since her disappearance. They said Arelie’s new boyfriend was one of the several dozen people they interviewed, along with her co-workers at the car dealership.
Josh Mankiewicz: “She ever tell you she was having trouble with anybody there?”
Veronica Garcia: “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.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “She never told either one of you that she was afraid of anyone, worried about anyone, thought somebody —”
Elizet Mendoza: “Mm-mm.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “— was following her, nothing like that?”
Veronica Garcia: “No, nothing like that.”
It’s not a stretch to imagine that Arelie, driving around Salinas in her practically pristine Day-Glo red Honda, probably attracted a lot of attention.
Josh Mankiewicz: “If you wanted to follow her — or if you wanted to know where she was — that car would probably help you.”
Elizet Mendoza: “Yes.”
Veronica Garcia: “Oh, yes. Definitely. Which is also kind of scary.”
Arelie’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, Arelie 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.
On the day Arelie disappeared, a Google Maps Street View car just happened to be cruising down Highway 1 in Big Sur.
At noon, it drove past Arelie’s Honda — about six hours before Eli and her husband arrived. In the Google picture, you can see it parked in the turnout, in front of two other vehicles — a white SUV and a silver sedan.
The lead detective told us investigators tracked down the occupants of those cars. He said they were tourists who’d been taking pictures of the view there. Police questioned them, but they didn’t recall anything about Arelie’s car, and the photos they had taken at that spot were not helpful.
Eli and Veronica say the Google Maps photo confirms what Eli noticed immediately when she and her husband found the Honda later that day: It was not slammed, lowered all the way to the ground — the way Arelie usually parked it.
Veronica Garcia: “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.
Arelie’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 Arelie 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 Arelie Home.“ Veronica says, at the time, her family wasn’t hearing nearly enough from police.
Veronica Garcia: “They would kind of 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 Arelie’s family:
Brian Johnson: “I would tell the family that we’re searching hard. We’re working. We understand that — the sadness that you’re feeling and, of course, we want to 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. And I know the holiday season is coming up and we’re hoping for the best.”
Those hopes have so far not been met. Christmas came and went with no breaks in the case. In March 2023, almost six months after Arelie went missing, a group of community activists helped organize a bigger protest. Veronica says several dozen people showed up for that one.
Protestors: “Bring Arelie home! Bring Arelie home! Bring Arelie home!”
Protestor: “What’s her name?”
Protestors: “Arelie Garcia!”
Protestor: “What’s her name?”
Protestors: “Arelie Garcia!”
The protesters marched to Salinas City Hall, where council members were meeting. When the floor opened for public comment, some of Arelie’s family members spoke — including Arelie’s niece, Alma Michelle Marquez.
Alma Michelle Marquez: “We want answers. Arelie 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?”
Sara Rubin: “I really credit the family with bringing a lot of attention -- and sustained attention -- to this case.”
That’s Sara Rubin, editor of the Monterey County Weekly. She’s worked at the paper for more than 13 years, and says Arelie’s case stands out from the other missing cases she’s covered.
Sara Rubin: “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.”
Arelie’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.
Josh Mankiewicz: “The priorities of the family and the police are almost never the same in this situation. The family isn’t thinking about anything else. The police are thinking about a lot of other things — like today’s crime.”
Sara Rubin: “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 Arelie’s case if that’s accurate.
He told us that while he hasn’t received many tips, all tips related to Arelie’s case get routed to him, and he handles them as a top priority.
Sara wrote about Arelie three months after her disappearance, and in that story she also wrote about another young woman of color from Salinas, who went missing about five weeks before Arelie.
That woman’s name was Kayeleigh Gammill. Her body was found in Big Sur.
Josh Mankiewicz: “Man, I mean, they are — these are two women about the same age. They kind of look alike. They disappear from the same area. I mean, it’s, uh, it — it’s certainly provocative that they might be connected.”
Sara Rubin: “I agree with you. Absolutely.”
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In Salinas, California — a city of nearly 160,000 people — 20-year-old Kayeleigh Gammill and 25-year-old Arelie Garcia lived just a mile from each other. Both had long dark hair, engaging smiles, and brown skin. And both disappeared, about five weeks apart in 2022.
Kayeleigh in August and Arelie in September.
Later that year, in December, Sara Rubin, editor of the Monterey County Weekly, wrote about both young women. By then, Kayeleigh Gammill was no longer missing.
Sara Rubin: “And for that family, the news ended really tragically.”
On August 30, 2022 Kayeleigh’s body was found in Big Sur, about 200 yards from Highway 1 — less than a month before Arelie’s car was found abandoned in Big Sur on Highway 1. Their cases seemed eerily alike to a lot of people, including Arelie’s sisters.
Josh Mankiewicz: “What do you think -- related, not related?”
Veronica Garcia: “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. It is very shady. It is very shady, for sure.”
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office is investigating Kayeleigh’s homicide. And the lead detective is someone you heard from earlier in this podcast: Arras Wilson. He’s the detective who described the searches his fellow deputies conducted for Arelie.
Josh Mankiewicz: “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.”
Arras Wilson: “We did.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “And so far you haven’t found anything?”
Arras Wilson: “Correct. I don’t like, um, 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.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “How is the case dissimilar? How are those cases not alike?”
Arras Wilson: “Uh, I would have to go into specifics.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “You don’t want to do that?”
Arras Wilson: “I can’t do that.”
Because Kayeleigh’s case is an active homicide investigation Detective Wilson wouldn’t discuss certain details, including when investigators believe Kayeleigh was killed and whether she died at the location where they found her.
Arras Wilson: “I can’t go into specifics, but regarding the Kayeleigh Gammill investigation, uh, we do have a significant amount of — of evidence.”
According to Detective Wilson, Kayeleigh was last seen walking away from her apartment in Salinas on the night of August 17th. Thirteen days later, someone called 911 to report they’d spotted a body on the coast in Big Sur.
Josh Mankiewicz: “Where exactly was her body found?”
Arras Wilson: “There was a turnout, uh, 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.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “As if somebody had pulled off the road and maybe thrown her body over the side?”
Arras Wilson: “That’s all part of our investigation.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Any person of interest or suspects in the Kayeleigh Gammill case?”
Arras Wilson: “I can’t answer that.”
Although the sheriff’s office helped with the searches for Arelie, her case is being investigated by the Salinas police. They told Dateline — and Arelie’s family — that they have ruled out a connection between the two cases.
Arelie’s Honda was found more than 25 miles north of where Kayeleigh’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: Kayeleigh was found. Arelie is still missing.
Josh Mankiewicz: “How unusual is it for somebody to be missing for this long?”
Arras Wilson: “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.”
Sara Rubin from the Monterey County Weekly says the fact that Arelie 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.
Sara Rubin: “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.”
Arelie Garcia: “Hi, lovie. I’m gonna say happy birthday and I hope you get better. And I love you.”
Three months before her disappearance, Arelie recorded a birthday video for Veronica, who was ill and couldn’t go out to celebrate.
Arelie Garcia: “And I will see soon so I can give you your gifts. And let me know if you need anything. And I miss you. And enjoy your day.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “This is not a pleasant question to ask either of you. You think your sister’s still alive?”
Elizet Mendoza: “Yes.”
Veronica Garcia: “Yes. We believe it in our hearts that she’s still out there somewhere, for sure.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “You think someone has her locked up somewhere?”
Elizet Mendoza: “Probably, at this point — because it’s just incredible how there’s no signs at all. Like, nobody knows nothing, nobody saw nothing — so it has to be that.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “You think there are witnesses out there that — that know things that aren’t saying?”
Veronica Garcia: “Oh, yes. For sure.”
Elizet Mendoza: “Yes. Definitely.”
Veronica Garcia: “There’s definitely someone. It takes one person, you know, to come forward — and maybe they’re scared.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “Maybe they don’t realize that the information they have is as significant as it might be.”
Elizet Mendoza: “Yes.”
Veronica Garcia: “Exactly.”
On July 22, 2023, 10 months after Arelie’s disappearance, her family celebrated her 26th birthday. It was a way to keep her memory — and their hope — alive.
Family: “Happy birthday, dear Arelie. Happy birthday to you…”
Arelie’s godson Davian sang with gusto and blew out the candles on his aunt’s cake.
He was 3 when Arelie went missing. Veronica and Eli make a point of showing him pictures of her so he doesn’t forget his godmother.
Elizet Mendoza: “Because we know she’s gonna come back one day.”
Veronica Garcia: “Yeah. She — he — my son still asks for her to this day. We pray together every night.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “I really hope those prayers are answered for both of you.”
Veronica Garcia: “Thank you.”
Josh Mankiewicz: “I really do. Maybe this will do a little bit of good.”
Veronica Garcia: “I hope so.”
Here’s where you can help:
Arelie Garcia is 5’5,” about 150 lbs., with brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a black hoodie and black leggings. You can see photos of Arelie 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 22, 2022. It’s the last known image of her.
Anyone with information about Arelie’s disappearance is asked to call Detective Edwin Cruz with the Salinas Police Department at 831-758-7393 or the anonymous tip line at 831-775-4222.
And anyone with information about Kayeleigh Gammill’s case is asked to call Detective Arras Wilson with the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office at 831-759-7203.
To learn more about other people we’ve covered in our “Missing In America” series, go to DatelineMissingInAmerica.com. There you’ll be able to submit cases you think we should cover in the future.