KENNEWICK: Sofia Juarez
On February 4th, 2003 - a little girl left home on a quick trip to the store, just a few blocks away. She was supposed to be getting in the car of a family friend who had just left, but when he later returned without her… the family realized that there had been a huge miscommunication. It’s the case that triggered the first-ever Amber Alert here in Washington state… This episode is all about the disappearance of Sofia Juarez.
Sources for this episode include: The Charley Project, Tri-City Herald, Missing Kids, KIRO, and Reddit.
Does the child above or woman below look familiar to you? You may have seen Sofia Juarez and not realized it, especially if you lived in Kennewick in 2003. UPDATE: New tips have come in about Sofia’s disappearance, you can read more about them here.
If you lived between South Washington Street and South Cedar Street and between 13th and 16th avenues any time during December 2002 and March 2003, please get in touch with the Kennewick Special Investigator at 509-582-1331
And if you have any information about Sofia’s whereabouts please contact the Kennewick Police Department at 509-585-4208 or call 1-800-THE-LOST, that’s 1-800-843-5678. You can also leave a tip on the KPD’s website.
Transcript-
Ashley: On February 4th, 2003 a little girl left home on a quick trip to the store, just a few blocks away. She was supposed to be getting in the car of a family friend who had just left, but when he later returned without her… the family realized that there had been a huge miscommunication. It’s the case that triggered the first-ever Amber Alert here in Washington state… This episode is all about the disappearance of Sofia Juarez.
Ashley: Welcome back to Washed Away, season 2, episode 8. I’m your host, Ashley Smith. On this podcast I cover unsolved crimes, cold cases, and missing persons from Washington state exclusively. And I always try to talk to an expert or family member, someone who knows the case better than anyone or maybe even was at the scene of the crime… which is actually true for who I’m speaking with for this episode. Maynard: I will be frank, we have no idea what happened to Sofia. And it is, it is the most important case that we continue to work on.
Ashley: That’s Commander Randy Maynard with the Kennewick Police Department, he’s been working on this case for 18 years and was on duty the night she went missing.Maynard: I was the on-duty patrol Sergeant for the city of Kennewick. I'm the supervisor of all the, the patrol officers that were working that night. Any missing child report is probably one of the highest priority calls that any police department can respond to. Um, not just our police department. And when there's a report of a missing child, especially one that is that young, especially that time of day, and it was 36 degrees out that night. I distinctly remember being in a, um, part of our uniform is we are permitted to wear, uh, during inclement weather, a leather outer coat. And I had my leather coat on thinking, man, it's cold tonight.
Ashley: Sofia was only 4 years old on February 4th 2003, in fact it was the day before her 5th birthday. Her mother last saw her on the night she went missing, around 825pm, when Sofia asked for a dollar to go to the store with her grandmother’s boyfriend. She was wearing a red, long sleeve shirt / blue overalls / and white sneakers. Maynard: I know in our particular department, it's not uncommon to be dispatched to a missing child report, at about four o'clock in the afternoon on a weekday, because a child has not returned home from school and virtually every instance, those are found to be some form of miscommunication between a child, a caretaker, and/or a parent. And so through some assertive investigation and deploying additional resources, we generally find or reconnect or get a report that the child has been found within a very short period of time. When we go to a missing child who is at the time 4, it's 830 at night, and it’s 36 degrees outside. Um, and her mother is calling saying, we've, we've been trying to find her for hours. And I don't remember if it was hours. It was some period of time and we have been unable to do so. For me personally, you just, you get, you get a knot in your gut that says, okay, this isn't necessarily a case of miscommunication where the child went to a friend's house and is not reported in to mom or dad. And so I, I remember immediately thinking, okay, I've got, I've got six or eight patrol officers available to me that work for the Kennewick police department. We are situated in Benton County. So I can call upon the Benton County Sheriff's department who has deputies on duty.
Maynard: Uh, and if necessary, I can call for neighboring agencies to assist. We also have the, uh, Kennewick fire department, they had firefighters staffed at four stations for that, uh, that shift. And so you start, you start processing, okay, what, what can we do to really get as many people working on this as we can. And the Sofia disappearance was the first activation of the Amber Alert warning system in the state of Washington.
Ashley: You’re probably familiar with Amber Alerts, but just to clarify - It’s an emergency message that alerts the public of a missing child as soon as possible, usually by beeping or buzzing your phone and showing up on major road signs. It originated in the United States in 1996 and its an acronym for America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response.. but it’s also named after Amber Hagerman, who was abducted and murdered near her grandparent’s home in Arlington, Texas when she was just 9 years old.
Maynard: When an officer gets dispatched to a missing person, a missing child case, one of the very first things that we're taught is okay, control the situation as best you can, um, and assign a couple of officers to do a thorough search of the primary residence or wherever this child was supposed to be because there's instances, when a child may be inadvertently, uh, stuck in a closet, or, and I'm not saying that as a negative reference, I mean, things happen, right?
Maynard: Kids, they fall asleep downstairs and, and mom or dad starts panicking and, and they may walk right past the child and not realize it because of their sense of panic. So we come in and, and we use two officers. And the first thing we do is go through the house and absolutely verify that the child is not present while those two officers are taking care of that. And we're looking at outbuildings, we're looking at vehicles. And again, we're not, we're not searching in the sense of conducting a criminal investigation or executing a search warrant. We are searching for, uh, the presence or absence of this, this child. We deployed two officers for that. That's, that's their sole duty. And then we also, um, immediately connect an officer with the reporting party, which happened to be, uh, Sofia's mom and we start getting a history.
Maynard: We start accounting for who else has rights or could be with this child, is both parents present? Are there other family members, older siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, uh, you name it, are there other family members or friends for that matter that the child could be with or could have gone with? And again, maybe it was just an issue of a miscommunication.
Ashley: Sofia lived with her mom, Maria, her grandmother, Ignacia, and her grandmother’s boyfriend Jose. Early reports also mention that Sofia had a brother, but I couldn’t find any detail of his name or age at the time. Sofia’s father was aware of her, but not really in the picture and police were able to validate his whereabouts for the night that she went missing. Here’s what happened:
Maynard: so, uh, Jose started up his vehicle to drive to the store. Sofia ran into the bedroom with her mother, uh, and asked Maria the mom for a dollar and permission to go to the store with Jose. Uh, it was not unusual for Sofia to decide to go at the last minute. Um, mom gave her a dollar and, uh, had noted that Sophia put her shoes on the wrong feet. Um, mom corrected the shoes and, and Sofia exited the house without a coat. In talking to Jose that night and subsequently, uh, he had no idea or no information that she wanted to go to the store with him or was trying to go to the store with him. And he drove away from the residence. Maria presumed that Jose was taking Sofia with him. Not that anybody did anything wrong. And that was the last that Sofia was heard from or seen was when she went outside, trying to go to the store with Jose.
Ashley: Hmm. And I think I, I must've imagined that he was also walking to the store and so she was trying to walk behind him, but he actually got in a car and drove away. Maynard: Correct.
Ashley: It’s assumed that Sofia tried to follow Jose to the store, which was only a few blocks from her home. She never made it there. Jose however did. And his whereabouts were verified by the police. He got to the store, bought some milk, made a phone call at the payphone there, and then returned home. That’s when Maria and the rest of the family realized that Sofia had never been with him. Maynard’s officers searched Sofia’s house and yard and eventually expanded the search to a three-mile radius around the home, which was located in east Kennewick. Then a tip came in.Maynard: So Sofia was, she actually went missing or was last seen about 825 that evening, at 923 is when Maria, her mother called police to make the report. And so the call came in at 9:23 PM and we arrived at 9:26 PM. And like I said, we immediately put forth efforts to, um, search the home search, the vehicle searched the outbuildings. Um, we were searching on foot the, the path from the house to the convenience store, um, because the initial information was that she was trying to go to the store with Jose.
Maynard: Sofia lived in the 100 block of East 15th. So she would have to walk West from her house to Washington street and then North to the Sun Mart. That's also the same path that Jose drove. Unbeknownst to us at the time, but revealed later. And I don't have the exact, I wish I could tell you when this information came to us, but there was a woman who lived in a house on the West side of Washington, and she was going to the store in a vehicle. And she pulled up to the stop sign. I don't remember if she was on 14th or 15th, but she pulled up to the stop sign at Washington to turn left and go North.
Maynard: In the headlight beam of her vehicle, she reports seeing a female that appeared to be who she later believed to be Sofia. Uh, she was able to provide enough description of her that we believe it was Sofia. We have every reason to believe her. Um, but we don't have any way to validate that independently. And again, that was right at approximately the same time that Maria said Jose would have gone to the store, uh, that information, that timeline was validated by the store video surveillance. Uh, and so, um, you know, at, at 825, when Sofia leaves, her mom recognizes that she's gone, and this woman makes this observation from her vehicle. The police haven't been notified yet. We haven't been notified for another hour after that. And so the woman that, that made the observation continued on about her business. And, and I, I can't remember if she called us later that night or the next day, but it was obviously some time after the observation was made.
Ashley: So at this point, it seems like Sofia made it to the Main Street near her house, based on that witness tip anyway. I asked if it’s a busy street there and the answer was not really - it’s one lane in either direction, there’s a couple of businesses, but it’s mostly residential. I don’t know about your neighborhood, but mine’s pretty quiet around 9pm on a Tuesday. I also asked if any other tips or reports had come in and Commander Maynard told me something pretty shocking:
Maynard: Our office for the past 18 years has actively investigated a recurring report. And I'm gonna use the word report loosely, that Sofia was struck by a vehicle on or reportedly on East 15th. The occupants of the vehicle stopped recognize that she was not deceased, put her in the vehicle and transported her away, where she was later reportedly killed and potentially buried by these people. This has been an absolute recurring almost verbatim every time it is reported. There there's some deviation to the facts, but we have, when I say we've thoroughly investigated that, we have tracked information back to the specific people that were named as driving the vehicle, the vehicles that they were operating and conducted search warrants with the Washington state patrol crime lab and the FBI, and nothing has independently substantiated any information that, that story, that explanation for Sofia's disappearance is validated
Ashley: That's wild. So someone, or several people keep calling in and saying, and like giving that as a tip saying that that's what happened, but every time it's been investigated, there's no evidence to support it.
Maynard: Absolutely. And I don't know how the information originally began. I don't know what has caused it to continue to perpetuate itself. Um, but it, it involves people who are involved in the drug culture and the drug that they're involved in narcotics use. And, I don't want to say distribution, but use of narcotics. Uh, and, there's always a tie back to, um, the narcotics involvement and I can't, and nor will I, or will anybody else from this department tell you that that's not what happened. Um, what we can say is that we've never been able to substantiate independently, anything even remotely true with any thread of that, that generalized story or explanation for what occurred to Sofia.
Ashley: Wow. That's so bizarre. It's almost like it's become an urban legend or something, and people just keep
Maynard: That’s the exact reference we use. Yeah.
Ashley: That detail really does seem like a local urban legend to me that’s just keeps getting repeated. If you’re not familiar with that term - here’s the definition from dictionary.com “an urban legend is a modern story of obscure origin and with little or no supporting evidence that spreads spontaneously in varying forms and often has elements of humor or horror.” In this case, it would certainly be horror. But because Sofia has never been found… that theory or “report” can’t be ruled out 100%.
Maynard: I've been a cop for 30, almost 32 years. I have been to trainings, uh, specific to missing and abducted children over the course of my career. And statistically speaking if the abducted child is deceased, the likelihood of finding the remains is pretty, pretty significant. Uh, there's a small, uh, I'm not saying anything's absolute, but there's a small number of small percentage of cases where the remains are not discovered if the child is deceased. So statistically, if she were deceased, the likelihood that we would ultimately, whether someone, obviously someone would need to call us and say, Oh, I found this, or I know this, but the likelihood of us being able to, um, locate and identify remains as Sofia's is, is statistically pretty decent.
Ashley: There’s also a chance that maybe Sofia is still alive… maybe she’s been raised in a different state, or a different country under a new name, it’s been known to happen.
Maynard: There was a concern raised by somebody, not in our department or not as part of the investigation, but somebody with a connection to the family that, excuse me, Sofia's mother had some developmental delays. And there was some concern levied somewhere that Sofia was not being raised, uh, as someone desired that she should be. And the premise was that she was, uh, she was taken from her mother and sent to live with relatives or someone else, uh, in Mexico in order to be raised in either a more traditional culture environment or whatever the reasoning was. And we've never been able to substantiate any of that to be true, but we can't, and won't rule it out because we, we don't know where Sofia is, if she's alive and we have not made a discovery of Sofia's remains if she's deceased.
Ashley: Here are some stats about missing children from a 2014 to 2016 report done by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children… 98% of missing children cases found that they were abducted by a family member. Over 3,000 children were found after 6 months of being missing. Only 151 children were found after longer than a decade. For Sofia, it’s been 18 years.
Maynard: This case occurred, um, 18 years ago, and we have had a lot of commissioned staff who have retired or otherwise resigned in that 18 years. And there is really only a handful of us remaining, not we will never, ever, ever forget about this case, and we will never stop working on this case, but there's only a handful of us remaining, uh, who were involved or have had any immediate connection to the investigation.
Ashley: That being said there are a couple new things happening around Sofia’s case in 2021. She’s the latest local missing child to be featured in the Homeward Bound program which uses commercial, semi trucks as rolling billboards throughout the area. That means Washington state and the Pacific Northwest. These trucks feature photos of Juarez as she looked as a 4 yo in 2003, as well as an age-progressed photo of what she might have looked like at 17 years old. She’d now be 23. There’s also a Neighborhood effort happening, where police are hoping to recreate a list of Sofia’s neighbors from around the time she went missing. if you lived in Kennewick between South Washington Street and South Cedar Street and between 13th and 16th avenues any time during December 2002 and March 2003, please get in touch with the Kennewick Special Investigator at 509-582-1331 or email al.wehner@ci.kennewick.wa.us
Ashley: Sadly, Sofia’s mom - Maria - passed away back in 2009, but she still has many relatives out there that are hoping people will soon come forward with new information, any information about what happened. Sofia has black hair and brown eyes, with a small mole under one of them. Her ears are pierced. When she vanished she was missing her four upper front teeth. She stood at only 3 feet tall and was 33 pounds. Sofia’s grandmother described her as a “loving, beautiful, happy child”. And the pictures I’ve seen of her absolutely exude that. You can see them for yourself, including the age progression image - it’s on my website. If you have any information about Sofia’s whereabouts please contact the Kennewick Police Department at 509-585-4208 or call 1-800-THE-LOST, that’s 1-800-843-5678.
Ashley: Washed Away is a Cosmic Bigfoot production. For sources, photos, transcripts, and more - visit the show notes for each episode at cosmicbigfoot.com/washedaway (I’m currently switching website hosts, but washedawaypodcast.com will be back up soon) Be sure to follow the show on instagram and twitter at washedawaypod and if you’d like to help my little podcast reach new ears - please subscribe and share or rate and review. Thanks for listening, and I’ll have another episode ready for you in a couple of weeks.
