15-Year-Old Abingdon Girl Missing Since Before July 4

Her Quinceañera was supposed to have been on the Fourth of July; 150 people were supposed to have gathered at Pleasant View United Methodist Church in Abingdon.
She had a pink dress picked out. Her mother had bought a gold ring and bracelet for the coming-of-age celebration.
But Carolina Ramirez, 15, didn’t have her Quinceañera. She couldn’t. She disappeared the week before.

Carolina completed her freshmen year at Abingdon High School this year. She was a great student, according to teachers and family. She was an honor roll student who received awards like the Citizenship Award at Watauga Elementary School, Character Counts award in seventh grade at E.B. Stanley Middle School and the VFW Citizenship award in eighth grade. Less than a month ago things changed.

On June 24, her mother, Nancy Hernandez Martinez, woke up at 3 a.m. for her shift at McDonalds. When Martinez returned home after her shift ended at 1 p.m., her daughter was gone.

Carolina had told her mother she was going on a school trip to visit colleges. Martinez had signed a paper to that effect. She said it had a Virginia Tech logo at the top; however, because she doesn’t speak English, she wasn’t sure what she had signed. Four days before she left, Carolina packed her birth certificate. Her cell phone stayed behind and she took no money.

The morning his sister disappeared, Luis, 14, had gotten up at 5 a.m. to watch TV. Carolina was already up.

“I went into the room and she was on the bed,” Luis said. “I asked her why she wasn’t asleep but she didn’t say anything. Usually if she didn’t want to say anything she’d tell me to quit talking or something but she just didn’t say anything. She just went and looked out the window and went back to sleep.”

Luis went back to sleep too, until his younger brother, 9-year-old Armando, woke him at 8 a.m., telling him Carolina’s bag was gone.

Sometime between 6:30 and 7 a.m. Carolina’s stepfather, Arturo Mata, woke up and looked out his bedroom window in time to see a woman with long, dark hair driving off in a black car. He didn’t think much of it. After all, Carolina was going on a school trip. He figured it was a teacher from school picking her up. In a note on the home computer, Carolina instructed her mother to tell her boyfriend she’d be back Sunday.

That afternoon, at 4 p.m., Isidro Martinez, Carolina’s 22-year-old boyfriend she met on the Internet a year ago, called from an Indiana phone number asking for Carolina, the family said. The two had been dating for a year but had still never met in person, her mother said. 

Carolina’s mother said Isidro was upset that he didn’t know anything about the college tour. Then, a few days later, he called again. This time he was crying. She said he told her that Carolina was not on a school trip. He said she was in Mexico and he had the e-mail to prove it.

With the aide of her English-speaking pastor, Yolanda Miranda, and Luis, Nancy Martinez contacted the Washington County Sheriff’s Office.

The day after the deputy’s visit, Mata called Isidro’s number. He said the boyfriend told him then that Carolina was at the college.

Miranda spoke with Isidro on the phone and asked him to forward her the e-mail he had received from Carolina.

“Every time Isidro talked he sounded very sincere,” Miranda said.

On June 30, Miranda received the e-mail. It was sent from a different e-mail account but signed by Carolina and said she was in Mexico with her father and grandmother. The e-mail claimed Carolina had left because she was angry at her family and went on to say that her father wanted to bring her brothers to Mexico and she wants Isidro to join her.

Luis found another e-mail, this one sent to Isidro from Carolina’s account a few days earlier.

It seemed suspicious to the 14-year-old, though. For one, it was full of misspellings, a characteristic very unlike his honor roll sister.

“She knew how to spell Spanish very well,” he said. “She also doesn’t write short. She doesn’t write like that. It doesn’t sound like her.”

The e-mail was also written in all capital letters and used words Carolina wouldn’t, Luis said. Even letters she didn’t know how to use.

“See that ‘ñ,’ she didn’t know how to do that,” Luis said. “Once she asked me how to do that on the keyboard and I didn’t know. She said that her boyfriend knew how to do it but she had forgotten.”

Luis said his sister would study three hours a night on her homework, help him with his and then come out into the living room to watch TV or do chores. She loved math the best, he said. When she got her boyfriend, he said she ended up just staying in her room talking on the phone to him. Even then, he said, her grades never slipped.
A former math teacher of Carolina’s said she was a strong student and very conscientious.

“She stands out as one of my very good students,” the teacher said. “She seemed so sweet. She didn’t seem worldly. She seemed almost young for her age.” 

Miranda said the family last spoke with Isidro on June 30. Mata had called Isidro with the story that Carolina’s mother was sick and in the hospital. He hoped to get Carolina on the phone if in fact she was with Isidro.

“He said, ‘I know where Carolina is and you don’t,’” Mata said through Miranda’s translation. “Every time he was talking it sounded like he covered up the phone and was talking to somebody else but I don’t know who. I got the feeling like it was Carolina sitting next to him, but I don’t know.”

Mata said Isidro got mad at them for calling the police. He told Mata that they were never going to see Carolina again.

Mata hung up. Isidro immediately called Miranda at home, checking if Nancy Martinez was truly in the hospital. However, Miranda didn’t know about the ploy.
Since then, Nancy Martinez has called her family in Mexico. All said they hadn’t seen Carolina. Her father went to Carolina’s grandmother’s house in Guadalajara, where she had said she was staying in the e-mail, but found no trace of her. 

Looking back, Nancy Martinez says she can now see the signs in the days and weeks before her daughter’s disappearance.

Just days before Carolina left, Nancy Martinez was on the living room couch and looked up to find her daughter standing in the hallway door staring her.

“She was looking into my face. She looked sad,” Martinez said through Miranda’s translation. “I asked what was wrong and she said ‘nothing.’ I wonder if she was trying to decide whether to go or stay.”

Then there was the time four days before when she asked her mom for her birth certificate.

“She said she needed it for ‘tomorrow,’” Martinez said. “But she didn’t end up leaving for another four days.”

Carolina went into detail about the college trip. She told her parents she was going with two or three other students, that they wanted to stay a week but Carolina only wanted to stay four days so a mother of one of the girls was going to drive her home on Sunday.
But there was no such trip, according to Washington County School Superintendent Alan Lee.

“I don’t know of any event that would have even been seen as a tour of colleges,” he said. He said college tours usually take place during the school year.
According to the Virginia Tech calendar of events on its Web site, there was not a college tour planned for that week.

“She didn’t used to lie,” her mom said. “She’s very intelligent but not at lying. Carolina didn’t do it herself.”

The Sunday before she left, pastor Miranda said Carolina stood up in church and said, “I want you to pray for my college trip.” She said that in addition to her weekly prayers for her family and grandmother in Mexico, Miranda said.

In her heart, Nancy Martinez thinks her daughter is in the United States.

What makes the case difficult is that it’s not only across state lines but is potentially an international case. Even the name of the boyfriend Carolina met online but never in person may not be his real one. And then there is the language barrier between police and family.

The Washington County Sheriff’s Office has interpreters on hand when it needs them, interpreters hired when no one is available to help interpret, said Capt. Jack Davidson.

In this case, Miranda agreed to help out, plus he said it was more cost efficient not to hire anyone.

Detective Robin Widener who’s working on the case said, “If there’s a translator and we have no reason to distrust them then we use them.”
But Carolina’s family friend thinks someone should have been hired.

“Interpreters have a very special role,” Roberta Hylton said. “People are trained specifically to interpret. You need to have excellent English and Spanish, you have to have been tested and understand the importance of relaying messages. You need someone who’s unbiased.”

Hylton said she thinks the Sheriff’s Office should re-interview the family with an interpreter because she’s not sure everything about the case was communicated.

“If it were my child I feel like they would have done more,” Hylton said. “I would have the ability to pester them. They (Carolina’s family) don’t have the ability to call for help. This is a little girl’s life and it’s been three weeks now. She is falling through the cracks.”

Hylton said it’s unacceptable that it’s taken this long to get Carolina’s name and photo up on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Virginia Missing Children Clearinghouse Web sites. Carolina’s poster was placed on the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children on Tuesday. It’s expected to appear on the Virginia’s Missing Children Clearinghouse soon. Click here to view the website.

Davidson said because Carolina packed her bags and left on her own the case does not qualify as an Amber Alert.

“She left on her own volition,” Davidson said. “We don’t think she is here in the area.”
And that’s why there have been no fliers posted around Abingdon, he said, because they have no reason to believe she is still in the area.
“It’s a very extensive investigation,” Davidson said. “We’re following every possible lead to locate her.”

But Watauga Elementary School ESL teacher Krystal Fleenor thinks having fliers up would help. That’s why she’s doing it herself. She said she’s going to distribute them locally and in Indiana.

“As of yet I haven’t seen a poster,” Fleenor said. “So much time has been wasted, it’s the least we can do. I feel helpless. I don’t know what else to do.”

She said even if Carolina is not in the immediate area, maybe a friend will see the flier and remember her saying something that could help the case or clear up why she left.

But just as her teachers find it out of character that Carolina would leave, her friends are baffled as well.
“She actually enjoyed her life,” said Christa Sheppard.

Carolina’s friends Sheppard and Suzanne Rowe were supposed to go to her Fourth of July party, Carolina’s quinceanera, but when they called a few days before to find out where it was she never answered.
Carolina had already been gone a week.

Austin Puckett met Carolina in sixth and seventh period math class at Abingdon High School last year.
“We got along well because we could make each other laugh,” Puckett said. “Anyone could be friends with her. She was easy to get along with. She was the quiet type but when she wanted to she could be really funny.”

Not only did she have fun outside of class, but in class her teachers loved her and trusted her. If they had errands to run, they would pick Carolina to run them, said E.B. Stanley Middle School ESL teacher Julia Ritterbusch. Ritterbusch also worked with Carolina in high school.
“She would do her homework twice, once at home and then again during study hall to make sure it was correct,” said Ritterbusch. “She was extremely disciplined. She was an off-the-charts student.”

Ritterbusch said Carolina also had a clear sense of what was right and wrong.
“She would stand up for kids if they were being mean,” she said. “I remember she and her friend were in line at the cafeteria and her friend said something really mean to another girl and Carolina told her friend to shut up, that she wasn’t being nice. I was really proud that she would stand up like that.”

Every summer she would help teach students reading and writing at Watauga Elementary. Every summer except this summer.

Ritterbusch said at a soccer game last fall Carolina confided in her about having a boyfriend. Ritterbusch told her to be careful. 
Ritterbusch said Carolina talked to her about her Quinceañera, she said she was excited because she was going to dance with a boy.

“The last time I met with her (in May) she had kind of blossomed,” Ritterbusch said. “Her first year at E.B. Stanley she was very sensitive, she would cry at school if she forgot her gym shoes. Now it seemed like she gained confidence; she said she really loved high school. I just can’t believe this could happen to her.”
The quiet girl could be a rebel at times, though.
“When she didn’t like something she showed it,” Luis said

Once about six weeks before her disappearance, her mom told Carolina that she was talking for too long on the phone with Isidro and she wanted to take the phone away. Carolina hit her mom, Nancy Martinez said.

“She started to be very aggressive toward the family,” she said.

But she prefers to keep the quiet daughter in her mind. She flips through photos on her digital camera. Carolina with the family at a restaurant. Carolina at church. Carolina cooking. Carolina laughing.

At first, Luis said his mom cried a lot. Then they started praying with the church.
“I don’t know why she (Carolina) went,” Luis said. “… I wonder what was going through her head. She probably liked that guy more than us.”
Isidro was supposed to have come to Carolina’s Quinceañera and meet Carolina and her family for the first time. That would have been two weeks ago.
Nancy said she didn’t go to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to get Carolina’s name and photo on the Web site because she was hoping that she would come back. She was hoping that she hadn’t really run away.

She still thinks her daughter will come back.

“I am calm right now because I don’t feel like she is in danger,” Nancy Martinez said. “I feel like she will come home.”

To contact the Washington County Sheriff’s Office regarding Carolina Ramirez’s case call (276) 676-6277.