So here it says:
"The skeletal remains were discovered on March 7, by a man walking his dog on Golden Valley Road, west of the Robert. C. Parkway, according to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department."
Remains Identified as Missing California Woman Who Disappeared While Shopping
But here it is:
One minute, the petite 26-year-old stepped outside a Goodwill in Reseda to smoke a cigarette while Sarah waited to pay for a vintage skirt. The next minute Maricela was gone, leaving her BMW, purse…
www.dailynews.com
"The remains of 26-year-old Maricela Garcia were found behind Golden Valley High School in Santa Clarita in March of 2017."
Sorry I've made a mistake and ended up bit too far on this highway it will be somewhere around here:
Google Maps
Still, well over 18 miles and looks pretty much the same.
The plausible scenario is that the secret she had was that she had relapsed and she knew that it could be trouble. She met up with someone in the parking lot to party with then overdosed and was dumped. We see this scenario play out again and again...
Let's agree to disagree about plausibility of that.
I can only rely on my own experience and those I had with people I've met - so it's neither a proof or an argument in any stretch of imagination, but no secret I ever told anyone about having or was told by anyone of them having was or revealed itself to be possible to describe as "
that thing which everyone is terrified of me doing again - well guess what, I'm doing it!". Of course I have no idea how it was said and in what context, what they were discussing right before Maricela told that, but I wouldn't bet anything on it being her relapse.
May be something
connected to the relapse: something what she saw, learned, did while relapsing, but not the relapse itself - or something
not related to the relapse in any way, no matter if she had it or not.
IMO relapse is for sure a good secret to have but highely, highely unlikely a secret to notify anyone about, especially not her, concerned about her life and health sister who was living with her.
The only reason I see for telling someone close about the secret's existence is having to deal with it's overwhelming weight and sharing something without sharing everything; seeking for some sort of relief, not causing the listener to go on high alert and figuring out that the secret is the most obvious and hardest feared thing that could come to mind.
I'd expect such secret to be something like:
- being seriously ill or worrying about being seriously ill,
- working on making a big but risky change in life,
- being pregnant,
- struggling with some knowledge, that a person would wish to not have: like knowing that someone is cheating, knowing about somebody's illegal activity, being whitness of a crime,
- feeling like having no other choice than to work in illegal ways,
- having love interest that with some reasons can be oficially introduced to friends and family.
Especially that her exact words were that she's guarding a secret. Guarding her own secret? That'd be very unusual way to phrase it.
I don't see her partying as plausible scenario unless she had something like borderline disorder and could switch into totally different mood in the matter of seconds.
She was noticeably nervous, went outside to have a smoke.
It was dark and raining, so for me nothing odd with her leaving her purse in the car, even if she got there to took a few cigs out. I'd do the same to not have a purse wet.
Then she went to the church and prayed for a bit till she suddenly run out, looking scared/worried.
She hurried towards the place that looks like this, and may be the only spot there that is surely NOT covered by the surveillance cameras, but car can park just next to it. Should be visible if any car was there I think.
She doesn't make a significantly long stop there, goes back to the shopping center, but checked it out from the "back", where the other entry to the groccery store is, and some other business, animal hospital and from where the other entrance of the goodwill store is clearly visible. All that path, starting from the front goodwill entrance near where her car was, to the church and behind, where possibly her cigarette buds were found... surveillance cameras are everywhere as I see on the google maps, and they're not new models, so they likely were there in 2017 as well. Her actions should be easily traceable by groccery store's cameras.
Looks like from these bushes she was heading back to the goodwill store. Then something made her turn back.
Makes complete sense for me so far. She had someone calling her at the store, it worried her and she tried to turn it off, failed so she turned off whole phone. Stepped out with smoking excuse, went to the church to pray. Then she had to either turn her phone back on or get conntact on the other phone, and someone told her to meet them at the bushy corner of the parking lot. Apparently nobody was there, so no stop but lighting a cigarette. Starting somewhere around that bush she should be able to smoke about half of it till she walked up to the point where she suddenly turned back.
Why she turned back? IMO not because she saw someone, but cause she got conntacted again and notified that she's expected to be at the other parking lot's rear end with bushes. Scared, distressed, she could smash her other phone on the spot to cut all the ties. Trash cans are there. Removing battery was likely the only way to get out the sim card. Both probably ended up in different trash cans along the way.
Then she heads out of the parking lot to the Lindley Avenue towards...
Edit: oh no, I lost half of my post cause website bugged and left me with what I had yesterday.