Nicole Irene Garcia

While systems are in place to immediately alert the public to keep a vigilant eye out for missing children through Amber Alerts, and the elderly by way of Silver Alerts, adults who have vanished are most often considered to have left of their own free will, apparently rendering an equivalent warning system or program unnecessary.

The legal definition of a missing person aged 18 or over in the united states specifies little more than the individual’s disappearance is “possibly not voluntary.”

The ambiguity of this official statement leaves much to be desired.

Is a person considered to have left voluntarily if they indeed left on their own, but were coerced or manipulated into doing so?

This is the story of Nicole Irene Garcia