MP for the week: Amanda Rivera

This week’s featured missing person is Amanda Marie Rivera, who was 14 years old when she disappeared on my fifth birthday: October 5, 1990. Last seen when someone dropped her off at a friend’s house in either La Mesa or Spring Valley, both of them cities in southern California.

Most cases like Amanda’s get written off as runaways, but for as long as I can remember she’s been classified as endangered missing. I don’t know why. I also don’t know why there’s two different places of disappearance and two different clothing descriptions given.

In fact, I have almost zero details about her disappearance at all, and I haven’t been able to find anything in the way of recent news that yields useful information. Of news about her from 1990, I’ve found nothing at all.

If Amanda is still alive, she’d be 40 today.

An aside: I really hope to be able to update today — I promised I would, and I found a lot of info on Daffany Tullos and Karen Zhou that I want to share with y’all. But my psychiatrist switched my meds again and I’m absolutely exhausted. I hope I get used to it soon and get my energy back.

MP event in Arizona in November

Stuart Somershoe, a detective with the Phoenix Police Department, sent me a flier about an upcoming missing/unidentified persons event planned for November 5. It will be held at Arizona State University, West Campus, which is in Glendale at the edge of Phoenix, bordering Glendale.

Det. Somershoe says:

We have had nine (!) resolutions from last year’s event. We opened/re-opened 22 new cases at the event and collected 41 DNA samples. We have had 3 “cold” DNA hits, connecting missing person cases with unidentified remains where previously no association had been made.

We want families to come to this year’s event. Investigators will be on hand to open new missing person reports (no matter how old) and also to collect identifiers like DNA, dental records, and photographs for existing cases.

It doesn’t matter how long the person has been missing (our oldest case from last year’s event was from 1965).

He asked me to spread the info around on social media. I ask that those of my readers who have their own social media accounts do the same.