Santa Rosa police resumes social media push to locate missing persons

For the second time this year, the Santa Rosa Police Department has launched a social media campaign for help in locating missing persons.

The department’s “Missing Persons Monday,” which previously ran January through March, resumed Monday.

For several weeks, the department will again highlight five cold cases a week, sharing on social media the photos and last known locations of people that it considers missing, with the hopes that community members can provide tips on their whereabouts.

The department’s previous campaign, developed and led by intern Erica Meyer, featured 30 missing persons over six weeks and ended with five people located, including one who had been missing since 2005, the department announced in April.

At the end of the last effort, Santa Rosa police Sgt. Patricia Seffens, who collaborated on the campaign, called Meyer and the department’s interns “invaluable” and praised Meyer’s creativity and enthusiasm for solving the department’s cold cases.

In an interview with The Press Democrat in May, Meyer said each resolved case was a source of “great joy.“

Authorities are hoping that sharing weekly posts on a few of the missing, rather than one long list, will get more attention from the public.

Here are the five featured this week:

Cousins Heydy Lizeet Julajoj Chuj, 25, and Jennifer Julissa Chui Jiats, 22, went missing in July 2016 after they did not return from church on Sebastopol Road. They had only been in the U.S. for about a month at the time, police said.

Kristopher Alyn Blankenheim, 34, last contacted his family in late 2021. He was homeless at the time and frequented the Sebastopol area, police said.

Carl Russell Barker, 80, left a care facility on Montgomery Drive in Santa Rosa in 2022 and did not return. Prior to living there, he was homeless.

Andrea Altamirano-Rodriguez, 24, was reported missing in 2017. She was believed to be visiting a pen-pal in Santa Rosa from Las Vegas at the time.

If you know the immediate whereabouts of any of the featured people, please contact your local law enforcement agency if not in Santa Rosa, or 707-528-5222 if they are in Santa Rosa. If you have any information that may assist the department in these cases, please contact the SRPD Violent Crimes Investigations Team tip line at 707-543-3590.