By Jon Chown
Few details have been released, but missing Utah woman Danielle Staley is safe.
It was the 35-year-old woman’s first-time visiting Santa Cruz County. She disappeared after a late-night bonfire near Rio Del Mar Beach on Nov. 6. Her boyfriend Alex Nunez said he had left to sleep in their van while she stayed on the beach with friends. In the morning, he woke up alone and went back down to the beach, only to find her cellphone and purse.
Danielle Staley
Authorities suspected foul play. “It becomes kind of suspicious when you’re looking at why are they here, why are they missing, is there a history of similar types of behaviors?” Sgt. Zach West of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office said early in the case.
West said the couple had been in Santa Cruz County for about a week before Staley disappeared. Her disappearance made national headlines and sparked a massive search locally. Her family members came to Santa Cruz County looking for her.
Nunez suggested Staley relapsed into drug use and ran off with others at the bonfire. The family directed suspicion at Nunez. Staley’s mother, April Miller, told Salt Lake City’s KSL-TV, an NBC affiliate, that Nunez and her daughter had been together on again, off again, for about 13 years and it was an abusive relationship.
“We’ve been concerned for years about that,” she said.
She said the family had been in contact with her the entire time she was in Santa Cruz, until Nov. 6. She had been traveling through California since September with Nunez.
“I probably talked to her at least four times a week, and we text other days … She’s in communication with us. She’s not trying to disappear from her family,” Miller told KSL-TV. “You know, if she has gone missing, I feel that she would have done everything in her power to get a call out to one of us to let us know that she was OK.”
Apparently, she was wrong. More than two weeks after being reported missing, Staley contacted the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office to tell them she was safe.
On Nov. 23, the sheriff’s office issued a press release at 8:09 a.m. announcing she was found. She has since been in touch with her family, according to the sheriff’s office.
The family is asking for privacy.
TOP PHOTO: “Missing in America” posters of Danielle Staley like this one outside of Safeway in Rancho Del Mar were posted throughout the county.