Desperate family members and authorities in central California are searching for a mother and her 8-month-old daughter, who haven’t been seen in almost two weeks since departing Fresno to return to their home near Sacramento.
Whisper Owen, 36, and her infant daughter Sandra McCarty were last seen on July 15, according to the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.
“I’m desperate to find my daughter and her baby,” Owen’s mother, Vickie Torres, tearfully told CNN. “It’s like she vanished into thin air.”
The pair left Fresno, where they were visiting family, around 5 p.m. on the 15th, according to the sheriff’s office.
A traffic camera last captured their vehicle, a silver 2006 Chevrolet Trailblazer, shortly after 8 p.m. in Atwater, around 66 miles north of Fresno, the sheriff’s office said.
Since then, neither has been seen – and no information has been uncovered to explain their disappearance, according to the sheriff’s office.
The Fresno Police Department, which is now leading the investigation along with other Northern California law enforcement agencies, told CNN they believe Owen and Sandra are not in the Fresno area. There is nothing to suggest foul play is involved in their disappearance, police told CNN.
Mother and baby last seen after doctor’s appointment
Whisper and Sandra were supposed to be “heading home to Elk Grove (Sacramento County) where family members were expecting them,” the sheriff’s office said on Facebook. Elk Grove is around 158 miles north of Fresno.
But due to a miscommunication, her family didn’t realize she was missing for three days, they told CNN Sunday.
Owen was in Fresno for a routine checkup for the baby, her mother told CNN. She visited her mother’s house, where she changed and fed the baby, before the 8:30 a.m. appointment.
Afterward, she visited her brother’s house. Richard Owen told CNN he last saw his sister around 2:45 p.m. on July 15.
Then, Owen returned to her mother’s home, where they ate lunch and played with the baby before she left around 5 p.m., hoping to get home to Elk Grove before dark, Torres told CNN.
But when she didn’t return home, her partner thought she had stayed behind to help her mother clean up a house she had just purchased, her brother told CNN. Her partner didn’t realize something was wrong until Saturday – when the two would normally spend the weekend together, Richard Owen said.
Owen’s partner contacted her family – which is when they realized she had been missing for three days — and her mother reported her missing to the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office.
Owen hasn’t had a working phone for the past year or so, making it sometimes difficult to communicate with her, according to her brother. Her mother told CNN she typically spoke with her daughter, sometimes using her partner’s phone, around twice a week.
Owen suffers from high blood pressure that has been particularly bad since she gave birth, her family told CNN. She was hospitalized multiple times during the pregnancy, according to her mother.
“My fear is that maybe there was a medical emergency behind the wheel, and maybe she had veered off the road,” her brother said.
“I can’t help but to feel like something horrible has happened,” Richard Owen said. “The last time I talked I talked to my sister, she was talking about how good life was. She was just happy. There was no reason for her to want to disappear or to leave.”
‘Somebody knows something’
Owen is an outspoken and outgoing “free spirit” who cherishes her children, according to her mother.
She has a 17-year-old from a previous relationship as well as an 8- and 3-year-old with her partner. The kids are “all devastated wanting to know if and when they will see their mother again,” her brother said.
“She’s just a very loving person,” Torres said. “Everybody loves Whisper.”
“We, as a family, know she didn’t leave on her own,” Torres said. “Everything is good in her life right now. There’s no reason for her to have taken off.”
Torres urged anyone with information about her daughter and granddaughter to contact police. “Somebody knows something and they need to come forward,” she said.
She added she was frustrated with limited law enforcement effort to locate the two. “We need this to go further. We need more help,” she said.
We are “making every effort to work with law enforcement agencies north of our jurisdiction to check areas that Whisper Owen is known to frequent,” the Fresno Police Department told CNN in an email. They have also shared photos of Owen and McCarty with law enforcement agencies across the state.
Richard Owen told CNN he has spent the past several days sleeping in his car as he and his wife search up and down the highway and comb back roads in the area where his sister was last seen.
He described his sister as a loving, trusting person who would “roll her window down for a stranger, whether it’s 2 p.m. in the afternoon or 2 a.m. in the morning.”
CNN has reached out to the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office, the Fresno Police Department and the Sacramento Police Department for more information.
“At this point, I’m not ruling out anything,” Richard Owen said. “I’m trying to find her in any way possible.”
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