San Diego

The family of a 31-year-old Mexican woman who has been missing from the Carmel Mountain area since Friday has appealed to U.S. and Mexican authorities for help, a Sheriff’s Department detective said Monday.

Guadalupe Sanchez Muniz was carrying $1,500 in cash Friday when her mother dropped her off at a bus stop in the Carmel Mountain Ranch area of San Diego, Sheriff’s Detective Helen Cardenas said. Muniz had been visiting her mother at the home of her mother’s employer in Poway for a week and was supposed to stop at a San Ysidro bank before returning to Tijuana.

Sheriff’s detectives are still investigating whether she ever arrived at the bank, Cardenas said.

Muniz’s family contacted friends, hospitals and morgues on both sides of the border when the woman did not arrive in Tijuana, Cardenas said, and later filed a missing person’s report at the sheriff’s substation in Poway and contacted Mexican authorities.

Muniz is described as about 5-foot-1, 115 pounds with short curly hair. She was wearing a full black skirt, black boots and a black waist-length jacket. Muniz’s family said she is mentally handicapped, Cardenas said.