Anxiety seen in Nancy Salas’ posts

At the turn of this year, posts on Nancy Salas’ Twitter account took a darker tone, including one that asked “why do these nightmares keep haunting me”?

Two months later, Salas posted “prayers for chelsea king and her family” — a reference to the San Diego honor student at Poway High School who disappeared Feb. 25 while jogging near Lake Hodges. Her body was later discovered buried in a shallow grave.

Salas was found in Merced on Thursday after she was reported missing the day before.

Her parents called police after she failed to return home from what they said was a morning jog up Chevy Chase Canyon.

But on Thursday, former classmates said Salas was “not really an avid jogger,” although she wrote about running on her personal blog, nancyjsalas.blogspot.com.

Friends and family described Salas as an outgoing young woman who spent a large part of her time involved with campus-based Christian outreach ministries, but some of her blog posts and Tweets appear troubled, describing recurrent nightmares and paranoia.

Four minutes after the Chelsea King tweet, Salas posted “Something feels very wrong. Time to meditate on Matthew 6:25-27.”

The biblical passage reads: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear . . . . Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life.”

And on her blog, Salas wrote that she had become paranoid during recent runs.

“The creepy guys that just stare when I go running up Chevy Chase completely ruin my workouts. I’ve been doing the Rose Bowl religiously for the past 3 weeks but sometimes I miss running the hills,” she posted March 5.

Combined with a number of posts on her personal blog, the comments paint a picture completely at odds with what leaders and colleagues at the church and UCLA say was the reality they knew.

Her pastor at Chevy Chase Baptist Church, where Salas was active in several ministries, said her online life was incompatible with the woman he knew.

“I just cannot see that being a reality,” C. Laine Julian said.

— Christopher Cadelago contributed to this report.