The clue to a young woman’s disappearance could lie on Google Street View.
The satellite mapping system snapped a picture on Sep. 22, 2022 of 25-year-old Arelie Garcia’s customized red Honda abandoned along the California coast — just hours after she peeled out of her driveway for the last time.
“It’s been like a scary movie since the day it happened. Like, it’s just been a nightmare,” Veronica Garcia, Arelie’s older sister, told Dateline this week.
The eerie picture is still on Google Street View today — almost two years after Arelie’s disappearance.
According to her family, the picture could hold the answer to how the unique sedan ended up parked at Big Sur, more than an hour away from Arelie’s apartment in Salinas.
“The first thing I noticed was that it wasn’t parked the usual way she normally has it,” Arelie’s other sister, Elizet Mendoza, said.
Arelie customized her car — which she treated as her “baby” — with an air suspension system that could raise and lower its chassis, they said. Whenever she parked the car, she typically lowered it all the way to the ground, which in car slang is called “slamming.”
The abandoned bright red Honda was not slammed that fateful morning and the driver’s seat was pushed back farther than Garcia would have had it, raising suspicions that someone else must have been behind the wheel.
Her family was the first to find the car around 6 pm that evening by using a phone tracking app.
Arelie’s wallet, keys and phone were inside her Honda, but no sign of Arelie — or foul play.
The 25-year-old’s family grew concerned around 10 a.m. that morning when Arelie uncharacteristically stopped answering her texts.
She was meant to be at her job at a local car dealership, but they soon learned Arelie had never shown up.
After looking at surveillance footage, they discovered she had left her home at 6:30 a.m. that morning — but was dressed in casual clothes instead of her office attire, indicating she may have had plans to ditch work and meet with someone.
When her red sedan pulled onto the turnout at Big Sur still remains a mystery, but the Google Street View snapshot helps narrow down the window — it was taken at noon that day.
The image shows it parked in front of a white SUV and a silver sedan, the owners of which have since been interviewed by police. Neither of them recalled seeing Arelie, meaning the car had been sitting there for even longer.
Despite exhausting efforts, police have not found Arelie or any clues about where she may have gone.
“We believe it in our hearts that she’s still out there somewhere, for sure,” Veronica Garcia said.