A heartbreakingly eerie Google Street View photo is the only major clue to the disappearance of a 25 year-old California woman.
Arelie Garcia loved her car, a bright red Honda Accord she lovingly customized and drove every day around her idyllic town. It was ‘literally her baby’.
The last time her family saw her she was driving it to work in Salinas, California, on September 22, 2022, before Garcia vanished without a trace.
It was later tracked down to Big Sur, California, more than an hour away, by Garcia’s sister Veronica.
Investigators don’t think Garcia drove the car there herself. They estimate Veronica found the car about six hours after it was parked.
But in an astonishing and creepy coincidence, a Google Street View car snapped the vehicle hours before that at around noon on the day it was parked.
The last time her family saw Arelie Garcia she was driving it to work on September 22, 2022, before the 25-year-old vanished without a trace
How her car looked when she left it for the last time is eerily preserved on Google Maps, after a Street View car photographed it as it went past
Investigators say the image – still available on Google Street View – was taken around three hours after the vehicle was left along the side of the road in Big Sur.
Veronica didn’t find it for another six hours.
It presents the tantalizing solution that anyone involved in Garcia’s disappearance may have been in the vicinity of the innocuous Street View vehicle at the time.
The cars drive around roads across the globe, providing a fascinating real life, on the ground view of roads and streets.
Investigators believe Garcia didn’t drive her Honda there. The driver’s seat was pushed too far back for Garcia’s 5ft, 5in frame and the chassis wasn’t lowered all the way to the ground like she always left it.
Garcia left her mother’s home in Salinas, California, at 6.34am and was due to be at her job as service advisor at My Chevrolet in Salinas at 7.30am.
She texted Veronica, whose son Davian is Garcia godson, at 6.56am: ‘Good morning. I miss you and my baby. Love you!’
Veronica replied at 8.53am: ‘Hi Lovie miss you too! And so does guppy love you!!’
Garcia was never late to work without calling in first, and was so close to her coworkers they texted frequently.
So when she never showed up, they got in touch with Garcia’s other sister Eli Mendoza at 10am worried about where she was.
What followed was a frantic flood of increasingly worried texts and calls from Veronica to her sister that she later realized were never delivered – including her first one.
Arelie was never late to work without calling in first, and was so close to her coworkers they texted frequently
She drove to her mother’s apartment and found Arelie’s room exactly as it always was, with nothing out of place and no note.
With no leads, Veronica pinged Arelie on the Find My Phone app and located it in Big Sur.
This made no sense as there was no reason for her to be there, and it was too far for her to get there and back in time for work.
Veronica went to the police station to file a missing person report, while Eli and her husband headed for the phone’s location.
When they arrived, they found the Honda parked in a scenic pull-over spot overlooking the ocean.
The car was locked, with Arelie’s phone, keys, and wallet inside, but no sign of her.
Police soon descended on the scene and spent two days scouring a four-mile radius with dogs, drones, helicopters, and on foot, but found no trace of her.
What they did find, was footage of her leaving the apartment wearing what looked like gym clothes, at least an hour than she would ever go to exercise before work.
She was wearing black leggings, a black hoodie, and sneakers with her hair pulled back into a bun.
Her family said they weren’t what she usually wore to work and she definitely would have been sent home if she showed up in them.
Arelie left her mother’s home in Salinas, California, at 6.34am and was due to be at her job as service advisor at My Chevrolet in Salinas at 7.30am
Another video showed her stop at Carmel Highlands General Store at 7.30am, about a 20-minute drive from where her car was found.
Police believe from their investigations that she reached the spot at 7.50am to 8.45am, and the windows were too tinted to see if anyone else was inside.
Garcia’s family believes given all these factors, she may have met with someone just before she disappeared.
But after police interviewed 62 people, including her family, the trail is cold and they hope a $10,000 reward will lead to new information.
‘We have exhausted every lead we had,’ Salinas Police Commander Brian Johnson said. ‘Nothing new has come up.’