Mexican Volunteers Keep Searching for Nancy Five Months After Her Disappearance

NOGALES, Mexico — As the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie marks its fifth month, a group of volunteers in this Mexican border city continues to search for the missing 84-year-old, even as they carry the weight of their own families’ losses, marching through downtown streets chanting “¿Nuestros hijos, dónde están?” — “Where are our children?”

The volunteers belong to Buscando Corazones, or “Searching for Hearts,” a grassroots search collective whose members are searching for Guthrie even as most of them are also still looking for their own missing relatives.

A search rooted in shared grief

For the women leading the search efforts, the motivation to look for an American they have never met comes from a place of deep personal understanding. “Nancy is a mother,” Luz del Rayo Lopez Carrillo, a member of Buscando Corazones, said in Spanish. “Because of that, we have to search for her — no matter her nationality, no matter whether she’s rich or poor. To us, she’s a mother, just like we are, and that’s why we’re searching for her.”

Lopez Carrillo’s own search is personal in the most direct sense. Her son, Dante Esau Lopez Carrillo, remains missing, and she described the torment of not knowing his fate. “We don’t know where he is, how he is, whether he’s alive, if he’s being tortured… if he’s being forced to do work he doesn’t want to do, if they’re forcing him into drugs,” she said. “It’s incredibly difficult.”

She is not alone in carrying that burden while continuing to search for Guthrie. “They didn’t just make my son disappear; they made our entire family disappear,” said Alma Griselda Ramirez Games, another Buscando Corazones volunteer, whose son, Pablo Ivan Dorame Ramirez, is also missing.

A search built on persistence despite repeated setbacks

The group’s involvement in Guthrie’s case began after an anonymous tip in mid-May suggested her remains might be found in the desert near a region known as Mariposa, close to the U.S.-Mexico border southwest of Nogales. Guadalupe Ramona Ayala Ortiz, who leads the group, has said the caller provided specific details about clothing and identifying characteristics meant to help confirm whether searchers had located the right person.

Despite multiple searches, including operations conducted in mid-May and on June 10, June 16 and June 17, volunteers have not found any trace of Guthrie. The group has said it will continue returning to the area regardless. “Every time we go out, we hope to bring a heart, a treasure, back home,” Ayala Ortiz said in Spanish.

The repeated searches have not been without consequence for the broader missing-persons crisis in the region. While searching for Guthrie, the group has uncovered roughly 25 unmarked graves in the area, none of which have been connected to her. Lopez Carrillo described the toll such discoveries take. “It’s an undignified death. It’s a death of abandonment,” she said, reflecting on the broader scale of disappearances the group regularly encounters in its work.

Coordination questions between U.S. and Mexican authorities

The searches have raised questions about the level of coordination between law enforcement on both sides of the border. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos addressed the Mexican search efforts directly in a statement posted to social media. “We are aware of reports regarding an anonymous tip related to the Nancy Guthrie investigation that was provided to a group in Mexico,” Nanos wrote. “At this time, we have not been contacted by Mexican authorities. The investigation remains active and ongoing, and we will continue to follow up on any credible information.”

Mexican officials, for their part, have said there is no evidence supporting the claims behind the searches. According to a statement from Sonora state officials, “There is no evidence, information, or objective elements suggesting that U.S. citizen Nancy Guthrie entered, remained in, or traveled through the state of Sonora.”

Former FBI agent Brad Garrett told ABC15 that close law enforcement involvement is essential in searches of this kind, regardless of who is leading them. “You really have to have law enforcement’s hands on there, because evidence could get destroyed,” Garrett said. Ayala Ortiz has said that while local Nogales police often accompany the group during its marches and searches, they are not formally part of the investigation, and that no U.S. law enforcement personnel have participated in the field operations.

A crisis far larger than one case

The volunteers’ commitment to Guthrie’s case sits alongside a much larger, ongoing missing-persons crisis in Nogales itself. The group says it is currently tracking nearly 650 people reported missing in the city, and members have said they want the faces of those lost to remain visible to the public, even as international attention has focused overwhelmingly on a single American case.

Elizabeth Lopez Vazquez, another volunteer whose son, Vicente Acosta Lopez, is missing, described the daily reality faced by families like hers. “For mothers and fathers searching for their loved ones, there are no holidays,” she said in Spanish. “There’s always an empty place at the table, because someone is missing.”

A connection across borders

For the Guthrie family, the searches in Mexico represent one more thread of hope in an investigation that has stretched far longer than anyone anticipated. Savannah Guthrie, the “Today” show co-anchor and Nancy’s daughter, has repeatedly appealed publicly for information about her mother’s fate. “We beg you now, to return our mother to us,” she said in an earlier video posted to social media alongside her siblings. In a separate message directed at whoever might be responsible, she said, “To whoever has her, or knows where she is, it is never too late to do the right thing.”

Lopez Carrillo, reflecting on the shared bond between the Guthrie family and the families she works alongside in Mexico, framed the search in terms of solidarity rather than distance. “We don’t search for someone else’s child. We search as if they’re our own,” she said. “We take on that identity. Maybe Nancy’s family can’t come search for her, but my fellow volunteers and I can search in her place.” She added simply, “Together, we become one mother.”

Where the case stands

Nancy Guthrie was last seen at her Catalina Foothills home near Tucson on the evening of January 31 and was reported missing the following day. Authorities believe she was taken against her will. Despite a $1 million reward from her family, additional rewards from the FBI and a regional crime-reporting organization, and the ongoing volunteer search effort in Mexico, no suspect has been publicly named in the case nearly five months later.

Anyone with information related to Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance is urged to contact the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or through tips.fbi.gov, or the Pima County Sheriff’s Department at 520-351-4600.