A woman reported missing in California was actually in a very visible place: competing on a reality show The Bachelor.
Rebekah Martinez, 22, was reported missing on Nov. 18, 2017, by her mother, who had last spoken to her on Nov. 12. She says her daughter told her that she was going off to work on a marijuana farm and would see her in roughly a week’s time.
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Local police attempted to contact Martinez and her close friends, but never received any response. (While shooting most reality shows, participants aren’t allowed to use cellphones or have contact with the outside world unless absolutely necessary. Any dire news or information is passed along to the participants via the show’s producers.)
In December, a deputy with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office contacted Martinez’s mother to see if the two had spoken, and she confirmed that she had, and her daughter said she was heading home. In order to remove Martinez from the missing persons list, police procedure dictates that authorities speak directly to the missing person. Since that never happened, Martinez was never taken off the list.
On Thursday, the North Coast Journal — an alternative weekly journal serving Humboldt County — posted an article with the headline, “The Humboldt 35: Why does Humboldt County have the highest rate of missing persons reports in the state?”
The article’s photo, a montage of some of the 35 missing people, features Martinez in the bottom-right corner. It was posted to Facebook and the publication asked its readers if they recognized anybody. An astute reader responded to the photo, identifying her as Bekah M. from the current season of The Bachelor.
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The North Coast Journal promptly reached out to the sheriff’s office, who then spoke to Martinez over the phone. She has finally been removed from the missing persons list.
Martinez reacted rather well to the news that she was missing, posting a joke tweet about the mishap.
No further details were available, but Global News has reached out to Martinez for more information.