A Southern California woman has been missing for nearly three weeks in Guatemala, where she traveled in mid-October to attend a yoga retreat for the second year in a row, her family said.
Nancy Ng, a 29-year-old from Monterey Park in Los Angeles County, disappeared soon after arriving at the weeklong retreat in Lake Atitlán, according to the family. They told the Los Angeles news station KTLA that the organizer of the retreat called them to say Ng had vanished just a few days into her trip, which she had left for on Oct. 14.
She was officially reported missing later that week, on Oct. 19, according to the description of a GoFundMe campaign launched in the wake of Ng’s disappearance. The campaign, to support search and rescue efforts in Lake Atitlán as well as travel expenses and other costs for Ng’s family, had raised more than $44,600 as of Tuesday.
“The last two weeks have been a living hell because when we first got the news that she was missing, we just had so many questions,” Nicky Ng, Nancy’s sister, told KTLA in a report published over the weekend. “What happened? Where is she now? Is there a chance she’s alive? We didn’t know anything.”
Updates shared through the family’s GoFundMe campaign offer more context. One shared on Oct. 30 — 11 days after Ng was reported missing — said “an extensive search of the lake” had been conducted by a hired professional search and rescue team, along with an air rescue crew, a dive team and local volunteers. Guatemala’s National Tourism Assistance Program helped the search and rescue operations get underway.
Jared Lopez / GoFundMe
But the post, written by Nicky Ng’s partner Jared Lopez, who created the GoFundMe, noted that search efforts “have been hampered by insufficient information regarding the exact circumstances and location of Nancy’s disappearance due to the failure of key witnesses (many of whom have returned to the United States in the past week) to step forward and provide a witness report.”
The investigation into Ng’s disappearance was being handled by local authorities, the U.S. Department of State and the FBI, according to her family. The family asked members of the public at the end of October to contact their elected officials with requests “to ensure the appropriate U.S. authorities, including the FBI and Department of State, conduct a proper and thorough investigation so that the family can find closure, and if the truth sheds light on it, justice.”
Money raised through the GoFundMe campaign has primarily financed search and rescue operations in Guatemala, Ng’s family said. The funds so far have been directed toward a helicopter search and rescue team, equipment for volunteer divers, boat rescue teams and, potentially, the use of submarine and sonar equipment. Lopez said funds will support funeral arrangements if the search and rescue missions are not successful, with anything remaining donated to a charity selected by Ng’s family.
Ng’s family has described her as “a caring daughter, a loving sister, and a supportive friend.”
“She loves yoga, traveling, hiking with her family, and cuddling with her cat,” reads the description on her family’s GoFundMe page. “She has a kind heart, a big smile, and can talk to anyone about anything (and often, everything).”
Ng works for the Alhambra Unified School District in Southern California, assisting students with disabilities, KTLA reported. She previously attended university at Cal State L.A.
The private search and rescue team hired by Ng’s family had searched about 95% of Lake Atitlán as of Saturday, according to KTLA. But Chris Sharpe, the co-owner of Black Wolf Helicopters, which is involved in the search, told the news station that significant gaps in information have made their operations difficult as they work to develop leads without the cooperation of important witnesses who may have been with Ng on the day she disappeared.
“We don’t know where she went in, where she went missing because there’s no corroboration of that … We’ve got a rough idea, but it varies from one side of the lake to the other,” Sharpe said, according to KTLA. “We just don’t know because we’re lacking that vital information.”
One of several missing person bulletins issued after Ng disappeared said, in a translated statement, that she vanished on the shores of Lake Atitlán “on the way to Caserío Jaibalito,” which is a small Mayan village accessible by boat in the mountainside around the lake. Ng was wearing a swimsuit when she disappeared and may have fallen into the lake, according to the bulletin. She is about 5 feet 8 inches tall, and has dark hair and dark eyes, another bulletin said.