Officials searching for a missing 30-year-old New Jersey woman in the California desert said they had found human remains this weekend, though identification could take weeks.
“The San Bernardino county sheriff’s department conducted an additional search and rescue operation in the ongoing search for Lauren Cho,” the San Bernardino county sheriff’s department said in a press release on Sunday. “During the search, unidentified human remains were located in the rugged terrain of the open desert of Yucca Valley.”
The department has conducted ground searches with dogs and used aircraft to survey remote mountains while looking for Cho, who disappeared on 28 June after walking away from a home where she was staying in Yucca Valley, near Joshua Tree national park and Palm Springs.
Identifying the remains and determining the cause of death could take weeks, the San Bernardino county sheriff’s department said.
“The family is just holding our collective breaths. We so badly desire answers, but already feel the heartbreak of what the answer could be,” Cho’s sister told CNN on Monday.
Cho, who friends called El, had quit her job as a music teacher in New Jersey to move to California after a cross-country road trip with her then boyfriend in late 2020. At the time of her disappearance, she was staying at a friend’s home, where she was working as a private chef for an Airbnb.
Cho left the property on foot on the afternoon of 28 June, her friends later told officials, wearing a yellow T-shirt and denim shorts. Her ex-boyfriend, who was also staying at the property, “indicated she was suffering from mental distress”, police have said.
Cho left behind her personal belongings, including her cellphone, as well as a pet parakeet she didn’t like to be away from, the Hi-Desert Star reported.
“There was a 10-minute window there and she evaporated,” Cody Orell, her ex-boyfriend, told the newspaper in July. Orell said he and friends searched the desert and hills before calling law enforcement later that afternoon.
Cho’s family did not respond to a request for comment. But the family has described her as “fiercely loved”, a dedicated aunt and “a talented musician, an incredible baker, a hilarious and loyal friend, a strangely intuitive gift giver, and probably the coolest sister one could hope for”.
Cho’s disappearance received fresh national attention last month after the killing of Gabby Petito, 22, who disappeared while on a cross-country road trip with her fiance. Petito’s case was extensively covered in the news, and prompted conversations about the disparate news coverage of missing white women compared with missing people of color, and the unequal treatment of missing person cases by police. Petito’s father has urged the public and news organizations to devote the same amount of attention to all missing persons cases.
Cho’s disappearance was one of several of missing women put into the spotlight amid the debate, with some online drawing comparisons between the cases.
Cho’s family expressed gratitude for the new attention her case received, but said they remained confident in the law enforcement officials investigating her disappearance and stressed there were few comparisons between the disappearances. “We realize that on the surface, the public information for both cases share some similarities. We understand the frustration many of you have expressed about how and why certain cases receive national coverage,” her family wrote on Facebook. “Ultimately, these two cases are NOT the same and the differences run deeper than what meets the public eye … We empathize deeply with Gabby’s family.”
The surge of interest in Cho’s case also created challenges for her family, who said on Facebook they have had to correct misinformation about her disappearance, field questions from online commenters, and dealt with “character defamation” of Cho.
