Toni Padilla- New Mexico- 2020

(Above photo credit: nbcnews.com)

From nbcnews.com:

“My Aunt Toni was someone very special in my world,” Mary Lou Ortiz said. “We had a really close connection. Wherever she was, I wanted to be.”

Unfortunately, Mary Lou doesn’t know where her Aunt Toni is anymore.

Antonia “Toni” Padilla has been missing since July 3, 2020. The 58-year-old was last seen in her hometown of Silver City, New Mexico.

“She was born and raised in Silver City,” Mary Lou told Dateline. “We’re, like, in the high desert mountain area right next to the Gila National Forest.”

Mary Lou told Dateline that Silver City is the kind of place where everyone knows each other. “It’s a small town. Everybody knows everybody. Everybody’s kind of in everybody’s business,” Mary Lou said. “So everybody knew her. Everybody liked her.”

And now, Mary Lou is hoping that someone will come forward with information about her aunt’s disappearance.

Toni Padilla loved her family fiercely. “Toni had two daughters and three grandchildren. She was a great grandma,” Mary Lou said. “They loved her. They loved her so much.”

“She was a really strong lady,” granddaughter Jasmine Rascon said. “She wore bright red lipstick. And she was friendly, and she knew a lot of people, and she really cared for her family.” Jasmine added that her grandmother was financially stable at the time of her disappearance, but that “she didn’t have a job.”

That’s because at the time of her disappearance, Toni was in charge of taking care of her parents. “She was a caretaker to my grandparents at the time,” niece Mary Lou said.

Toni’s mother is diabetic and she needs to have insulin three times a day. “My aunt lived right next door to them, and she would go three times a day and check on them.”

That’s just who Toni was. “She was a very loving person. If she loved you, you knew she loved you,” Mary Lou said. “She would offer you anything. Whatever you needed -- clothes, food, a shower at her house.”

But Mary Lou said Toni was going through a hard time and had recently been struggling. “We were approaching her youngest daughter -- her anniversary of her death. She had passed away on June 24, so she was in a little bit of a spiral around this time,” Mary Lou said, adding that Toni’s daughter Katrina had been gone five years, at that time. “The anniversary hit hard.”

Not only was Toni still mourning her daughter’s death, but she was mourning the death of her boyfriend a few years earlier. “There was a lot of tragedy going on in the past couple of years where she was struggling,” Mary Lou said. Jasmine agreed that it was a tough time for her grandmother. “That really took a lot out of her, but she’s always gone on with every day. She had a lot of faith in God,” Jasmine said. “She wasn’t the type to run away or --. Suicide wasn’t, like, a thing for her, either.”

o when Toni Padilla went missing on that hot summer day, her family immediately knew something was wrong.

That Friday, July 3, 2020, Toni asked her daughter Jessica to take her to a friend’s house in the Silver Acres area at about 1:00 p.m. “It’s a mobile home in the Silver Acres area of Silver City. It’s off Ridge Road,” niece Mary Lou said.

So Jessica dropped her mother off. The plan was that Toni would call her when she was ready to be picked up. “When my aunt didn’t call her, my cousin just went to the house,” Mary Lou told Dateline. According to Mary Lou, Toni’s daughter asked the people there where Toni was and they said she “left walking.” It was about 3:00 p.m.

“Jess kind of just started calling her, and there was no answer,” Mary Lou said.

Toni didn’t come home that night, and she didn’t show up for her 4th of July plans, either. “She had made plans with my younger cousins,” granddaughter Jasmine said. “She was supposed to see them and they were supposed to do something together and she didn’t show up for that.”

“Right away I told [my mom] we have to go look for her because that’s really out of the ordinary,” Jasmine said.

They began searching near where Toni was last seen. “We looked for her all afternoon,” Jasmine said. “There was no sign of her.”

Mary Lou Ortiz lives in California. She said she learned Toni was missing on July 5 when she spoke with her mother, Toni’s sister. “My words were to my mom, were like, ‘OK, Mom. Well, let’s just start, I guess, by calling all the hospitals in the surrounding areas.’ And I’m not talking just Silver City. I talked to Las Cruces, Tucson,” Mary Lou said. “And I told her, ‘Call the jails and the hospitals, Mom. Let’s see.’”

Mary Lou told Dateline that her aunt Toni wasn’t one to just disappear. “If she was going to go away for a little bit, she would tell someone,” Mary Lou said. “Even if she wasn’t going to tell you where she was going, she’d tell someone, like, ‘I’m going to be gone.’”

Toni Padilla was not found in any jail or hospital in the surrounding towns.

So it was that day, July 5, that Toni’s daughter Jessica and her granddaughter Jasmine decided to report her missing. “I just told my mom, ‘Let’s just go report her missing to the police,’” Jasmine said.

A week after her aunt’s disappearance, Mary Lou returned to Silver City to help the family search. “When I went down there to search for her, we would have to start at, like, 6:00 in the morning, and then we were done by noon because it was too hot,” she said. “And then we would go again in the evening a little bit and drive the back roads.”

Mary Lou said her family walked for miles searching for Toni. “You don’t know what it’s like to look for someone who’s missing until you walked miles on your feet, searching the ground, searching through the grass, searching through the mountains,” she said. “It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack, literally. You’re just walking and looking and walking and looking.”

Toni’s granddaughter Jasmine told Dateline that in the weeks and months following Toni’s disappearance, volunteers would show up to help search. “She was real big in church, so people from the church would come,” Jasmine said. They also held a prayer vigil for Toni, and had the pastor from her church speak.

They put up fliers around Silver City. “We just would look for anything. Like, I don’t know what we were looking for... a driver’s license, a lipstick. My aunt Toni always had lipstick on. She always wore her red lipstick. She always carried a brush,” Mary Lou said. “You’re searching for just any hint of her that you would think. She always carried a big old purse. ‘Where’s her purse? Let’s see if we could find that.’”

The family says they never found anything connected to Toni’s disappearance. Mary Lou said that her aunt’s social media and bank accounts have not been touched since July 3, 2020.

Dateline spoke with Captain Melinda Hobbs of the Silver City Police Department about Toni Padilla’s disappearance. She confirmed Toni was last seen on July 3 and reported missing two days later on July 5.

Captain Hobbs also told Dateline that Toni’s disappearance is suspicious in nature. “We definitely feel that foul play is suspected because we’ve never found her,” the captain said. “So the circumstances of her disappearance are suspicious.”

When asked about the Silver City Police Department’s search efforts, Captain Hobbs told Dateline that they’ve searched several areas in connection to Toni’s case. “We’ve searched ponds, we’ve searched cemeteries,” she said. They also used cadaver dogs.

According to Captain Hobbs, the Silver City Police Department did not find anything of note in those searches.

“We obtained security footage from a gas station on Ridge Road,” Captain Hobbs said. “Nothing came of it. We never saw Toni.”

They also took a look at Toni’s phone usage on the day of her disappearance to see if they could trace Toni’s movements digitally. “So the last correct ping that we got on her phone was in the area of her home,” Captain Hobbs told Dateline. “After she leaves her home, we never pick up another ping from her phone.”

The Silver City Police Department has also obtained several search warrants in Toni’s case. “Anything that we are getting over the years, as far as a tip, what we do is -- as long as we have enough probable cause to obtain a search warrant -- we do that,” Captain Hobbs said. “So far we’ve done several search warrants covering several areas and we’ve found nothing.”

After the family’s own efforts in Silver City didn’t yield results, Mary Lou decided she needed to cast her net wider. She reached out to Dateline after seeing our reporting on the 2010 disappearance of 18-year-old David Ortiz, also in Silver City. Their families are not related by blood but, to Mary Lou, they are related in a different way. “Unfortunately, we are part of a community we never... thought we’d be a part of together,” she said. “And it’s because we have a loved one who is missing.”

And being part of that community can bring more than just heartbreak about the disappearance itself.

“We’ve heard so many rumors, ugly rumors. They’re so bad,” Mary Lou said. “But none of these rumors have surfaced my aunt anywhere.”

Toni’s granddaughter Jasmine agreed. “I’ve heard so many stories. People come to you all the time telling you, ‘No, this is what happened. This is what happened,’” Jasmine said. “But after so many stories, it’s like, I don’t know, it circulated all into lies.”

Those stories and rumors just add to the pain Toni’s family feels. “Nothing’s going to make it better,” Jasmine said. “It hurts all of us, not knowing where she is.”

Mary Lou told Dateline that, at this point, she just wants her aunt back. “At first, I was so like, ‘Who did this?’ And, ‘Where is she?’” Mary Lou said. “And now, I will honestly say, ‘I don’t care who you are. I want her back. I want her back.’”

Toni’s family is hoping that someone out there has information on her aunt’s whereabouts. “We need people to come forward,” Mary Lou said.

“We do have people that we are looking into,” Captain Hobbs told Dateline. She added that some of those people have been interviewed by police multiple times. The captain said that at the end of the day, she believes there is just one person in particular who may have information about Toni’s disappearance. She’s hoping they’ll come forward. “We just really want that one person to tell us what happened.”

Toni’s niece Mary Lou told Dateline that the nonprofit, Southern New Mexico Unsolved Murders, is working on raising funds to offer a reward in both Toni and David Ortiz’s cases. Mary Lou said they are also “trying to raise the money for a billboard in town to let people know that these cases are still unsolved.”

Captain Hobbs said she is dedicated to getting answers for Toni Padilla’s family. “It’s definitely open,” Captain Hobbs said. “We’re not stopping.” She added that the department is hard at work on both Toni and David’s cases. “It might be quiet, but we are always working,” she said. “We’ve done so much over the last few years and just seem to hit dead ends, but we’re not stopping with these cases.”

According to Captain Hobbs, the Silver City Police Department has recently sent both Toni and David’s cases to be reviewed by the Rocky Mountain Information Network — an organization that provides investigative support to local, state, federal and tribal criminal justice partners in states along the Rocky Mountains, including New Mexico. “They don’t take the case completely. They look it over with us,” Captain Hobbs said. “When they’re done with the case, they will get with us, and we will work together.” Authorities will then pursue any new angles to the investigation developed during the collaboration.

Toni is 5’3” and weighed about 100 lbs. at the time of her disappearance. She has long brown hair and brown eyes.

She has a few distinguishing tattoos, including a rose on her left hand. She has the names Jessica and Jasmine tattooed on her left arm, and the name Katrina tattooed on her right arm. She has a rose vine tattoo on her left ankle, a faded tattoo across her chest and a small cross tattoo on her left pinky finger.

Toni also has a small birthmark above her right eyebrow. Both of Toni’s eyebrows were tattooed on, as well.

“I thought she was just the most beautiful person in the world,” niece Mary Lou Ortiz said. “I wanted to put my makeup on just like her. I wanted to be just like her. I just, kind of, looked up to her.”

Toni was last seen wearing a long blue blouse and black capri pants with a photo of Marilyn Monroe and a red rose on them. She was wearing flip-flops and carrying a big gray purse. She would be 61 years old today.

Anyone who has information is asked to call the Silver City Police Department at 575-388-8840.

www.nbcnews.com/dateline/missing-in-america/family-desperately-searching-silver-city-new-mexico-woman-toni-padilla-rcna93624



Thoughts? I am placing Toni's case in the National Media section because of the above coverage on Dateline NBC's "Missing in America" digital series.


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