After coming home from a night out with friends in January 2020, 23-year-old Veronica Reyes-Diaz tucked her kids into bed before walking back outside. The Tampa, Fla., woman hasn’t been seen since, leaving behind her SUV with her keys, purse, wallet and cash in the vehicle.
Cieha Taylor, at left, and Veronica Reyes-Diaz.Family Photo; Facebook
Police have not declared either missing person case the result of foul play. Nor have they made a connection between the two disappearances. “We have no information at this time that would link them together,” a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson tells PEOPLE.
“This has brought our families together for one goal, to find our daughters,” Veronica’s father Fidencio MinjarestoldDatelinein 2020. “Every time I’m out searching for Veronica, I’m searching for Cieha, too.”
In a pair of podcast episodes, the sheriff’s office has laid out what they know about the mysterious disappearances ofVeronicaandCieha(pronounced KAI-yah), in hopes the public might help find them.
“No one wants to go without answers,” says Det. Tony Watson, a 24-year veteran of the sheriff’s office, on one of the episodes. “There’s nothing worse than just having that case out there, or being that family member, and going, ‘We don’t know what happened.'”
Veronica Reyes-Diaz.Facebook
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Yet Veronica and her husband – who was not the biological father of the older children – also had a court date for the following week to formalize their adoption. “Why arrange all this that you’re going to adopt children if you have plans on leaving, or plans on disappearing?,” said the detective.
Cieha Taylor.Family Photo
Cieha’s disappearance three weeks later followed a phone call to a friend in which “she was definitely upset,” Det. Joseph Florio said in the podcast dedicated to her case.
The mother alerted her son, who told her, “Oh, there’s something wrong,” said Florio. They then called the friend in Lakeland, and ultimately had the car delivered to Cieha’s mom.
“As soon as I knew the phone and the keys were in the car,” Canitha Taylor told the podcast, “I was worried.”
She described her daughter as a “bubbly” young woman with “a sweet and loving personality,” but one who also had experimented with drugs and fallen in with a group that her mother didn’t like.
On the day Cieha was last seen, her boyfriend and his friend told authorities that she was not acting “as she normally would,” according to the detective. “They described her as more erratic and possibly going through some type of mental crisis of some sort.”
But that’s where her trail stops.
“She’s still very present to me, but physically not,” Canitha Taylor tells PEOPLE. “So even when I think there’s a small bit of hope that she’s still out there, God, I hope she’s okay and that she’s safe, but I’m already preparing myself for the worst anyway. Because it just, after a year, this hope starts to diminish. But I still have a little bit of hope she’s somewhere.”
The sheriff’s office asks anyone with information about either missing person to call 813-247-8200.
source: people.com
