More Than Two Weeks After Carla Valpeoz Disappeared FBI Joins Peruvian Authorities In The Search
by Heather Cassell
The holidays have been filled with heartache for Carla Valpeoz’s family. As the New Year harkens, her family is desperate to find her.
Carlos Valpeoz’s voice began to crack as he choked up talking about his sister’s disappearance after speaking about her “very adventurous spirit” in a video interview with NBC News from New York on December 18.
“We love you. We want you to come home safe to your friends and family who love you so much and who are thinking about you,” he said. “We hope you are safe.”
It’s been two and a half weeks since Carla’s family has heard from her. She was dropped off by a taxi cab near a bus station in Cusco, the former Incan capital city in the Peruvian Andes, on December 12, her brother told reporters.
She was traveling through Peru after she attended a wedding with her friend Alicia Steele, 32.
The fellow Detroit native has stayed in the South American country to help Carla’s father, who arrived December 17, search for her, according to media reports.
After her friend’s wedding, Carla planned to tour Peru for two weeks visiting various sites while Alicia stayed in Lima, the South American country’s capital city, and celebrate her 35th birthday on December 8, reported the Detroit Free Press.
The women were scheduled to return to the US on December 15.
Vanished
However, Carla vanished December 12, the day before she was scheduled to meet Alicia in Lima.
That’s the last she was seen or heard from, three days before she planned to board a plane home to the states. Local police also received a tip that Carla was seen in the nearby region Madre de Dios.
There hasn’t been any activity on her credit card or her cell phone since, reported CNN.
The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation joined several local jurisdictions of police in the search for Carla on December 29, reported Peru Report.
Her family doesn’t believe there has been foul play, Carlos told NBC News before Christmas, despite her disappearance is highly uncharacteristic of her.
“There’s no way that she would worry anyone by not contacting them,” he said. “She would have tried to establish some kind of contact with somebody by now.”
“She’s missed a couple of flights here and there and had to reschedule,” her brother explained to ABC News. “She’s gotten turned around a little bit. But the thing that’s extremely out of character about this situation is the fact that she has made absolutely no contact with her friends.”
Local authorities are working off of two hypotheses of her disappearance, according to CNN. They think she might be near the pre-Columbian agricultural village and a hilltop Inca fortress that towers over the village Pisac, which is about an hour north of Cusco, heading toward The Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu.
They also believe that she might be engulfed in a local experience within the community, General Max Iglesias, chief of the 7th Macro Police Region Cusco-Apurimac, told CNN on December 15.
This is the second disappearance of a U.S. Latina citizen, coincidentally both named Carla, traveling in Latin America.
Carla Stefaniaka, 36, a Hallandale Beach, Florida resident, disappeared from her upscale Costa Rican Airbnb in a suburb of the country’s capital city San Jose on November 28, the night before she was scheduled to fly home. Her body was later found about 1,000 feet from the vacation rental on December 3. An illegal Nicaraguan security guard was arrested for her murder.
Representatives of the US State Department both told reporters that it “has no greater priority than the safety of US citizens abroad,” and they were aware of both Carlas disappearances abroad but weren’t able to comment.
“When a US citizen is missing, we work closely with local authorities as they carry out their search efforts,” a department spokesperson told ABC News.
“The US Department of State and our embassies and consulates abroad have no greater responsibility than the protection of US citizens overseas,” the official said. “Due to privacy concerns, we have no further comment.”
Carla Stefaniaka’s family questioned the state department’s commitment to finding their missing relative in a Facebook post stating that they had received little assistance by local and United States officials.
Carla Valpeoz’s family hasn’t mentioned their experience with Peruvian and US officials.
Peruvian police told the Valpeoz family that they’ve obtained video of Carla getting into a cab Wednesday morning, they said.
Adventurer
The Detroit native is a well-traveled adventurer on a quest to see the world before she completely loses her vision.
The 5-foot-1 woman with brown hair and eyes is legally blind. She was diagnosed with optic nerve atrophy when she was 10-years old, an untreatable condition, according to the American Association for Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus, reported CNN. Since then, her vision of the world has slowly been enveloped by darkness. She currently walks with a cane to help her navigate with her low vision through the world that she’s insistent on seeing before she can’t see it anymore.
“My sister has a very adventurous spirit,” said Carlos about his sister who is a social activist, emerging vlogger of Carla’s Visionless Adventures, and author of “Visionless Adventures.” “She’s traveled all over the world.”
“She wanted to travel as much as she could whether with friends or independently,” he continued telling ABC News.
Her adventures took her to Papua New Guinea and Yemen where she lived for a time to traveling to Egypt and South America, some of the places she had been to her brother said.
“My adventurous spirit challenged me to step out of my comfort zone, giving me the opportunity to live among different cultures and communities,” she said in a video on YouTube. “I want to create a platform and I want to bridge communities of cultures and carry out workshops so that we can learn to work together.”
In Peru, she was last seen carrying a green backpack, Carlos told the Free Press.
When she’s not traveling, she works as a tour guide at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.
“Carla is a very determined person, a humanitarian in her community, a leader devoted to life, to travel and immersing herself,” he told CNN on December 18. “Since an early age, our family has prepared her for when she would lose her sight and that’s why she wants to see so much.
“She has had a challenging life, but she doesn’t fall in the category of just being a blind person and wants to experience the world before she can’t see anymore,” he continued. “She has always had a great heart. She sees the world in a positive light.”
She scaled Huayna Picchu, which overlooks Machu Picchu, with a group of people, Carlos said.
The group returned to the Pariwana Hostel in Cusco around 10 p.m. on December 11.
Before the group went clubbing that night, Carla sent a message to Alicia around 11:47 p.m. on December 11 about her trip to Machu Picchu, she told reporters.
Carla was exhilarated about her adventure and couldn’t wait to tell her friends about it.
“I can’t wait to tell you all about it. It was absolutely worth 100%,” the text message read, reported the Free Press. “I’m coming in on Thursday afternoon so I will send you the details through email once I check in. It would be a wonderful welcoming to have all of you come pick me up.”
Early in the morning December 12, she returned to the hostel with another woman she met that day around 4 a.m. She slept in the room she shared with another woman, who woke up at 9:30 a.m. to see that Carla had packed and left the room, Carlos told ABC News.
Surveillance video shows that she left the hostel in a cab around 9 a.m. on December 12. It was around that time she sent her last WhatsApp message, her brother said.
The last time Carlos spoke with Carla, she expressed interest in visiting a Peruvian village, Pisac, which is about 22 miles (35 kilometers) northeast of Cusco, he told CNN.
Searching
Carla was scheduled to return to Lima on a 6:43 p.m. flight she booked on Orbitz on December 13. She never arrived.
Since Carla was an experienced world traveler, Alicia wasn’t concerned that her friend didn’t show up as planned two days before they were to fly home, she told the Free Press. She thought Carla lost her phone when she didn’t hear from her friend.
She became concerned when Carla didn’t show up at their flight in Lima to return home December 15. It was then that Alicia filed a missing person report with Peruvian police.
Alicia didn’t board their flight. She is staying in Peru helping Carla’s father to continue the search for her.
“We’ve been searching ever since,” Alicia told the Free Press in a phone interview from Peru on December 17.
However, there has been a lot of confusing information being provided about last sightings of Carla.
“The last thing we heard is that a man who works at the entrance of Machu Picchu saw her. She was by herself on the 15 and was going to climb up Machu Picchu … She looked well and she looked good.”
Her friends and family noted that Carla had already been to Machu Picchu and have photos of her with a tour group with three Spanish travelers and a man from Argentina on December 11, Carlos told the Free Press from Brooklyn, New York where he was interviewing other travelers who had been with his sister.
The travelers corroborated Alicia’s timeline receiving Carla’s message about spending the day at Machu Picchu with her that day and going clubbing with the tour group that night, he told the newspaper.
The Ministry of Culture confirmed that it had a record of Carla visiting the site that Tuesday, he told their hometown newspaper.
It didn’t make sense that she would return, they told the Free Press.
Later in the morning of December 12, one of the travelers said they received a message from Carla at 10:02 a.m. telling them that she would be back around 1 p.m. She texted that she would contact them to find out where they were to potentially go see some museums, said Carlos, who expressed the other travelers were concerned by Carla’s disappearance.
Despite being dropped off at a bus station, there is no record of her boarding a bus or any bus driver seeing her, her brother said insisting that she wouldn’t put herself into a dangerous situation.
Three people – a bus driver, a trail employee, and an archeologist – recently told investigators that they saw Carla alone, but didn’t say when or where, reported CNN.
The new witnesses said they saw Carla get off a bus in Pisac near the Urubamba River. They told investigators they saw her walking alone on a hiking trail to an Inca archaeological site, her brother told the cable news network.
Authorities discovered that she turned in an entrance ticket to Pisac Archaeological Park, but there isn’t an exit ticket from the park. They believe that she might still be in the park, reported Peru Report.
“Our hypothesis is that she is still up there,” said Peru National Police Chief Manuel Mar, reported the local newspaper. “The park guard punched the admission ticket, not the exit one. She might have taken a different route, an unusual path, on the way down.”
Authorities are now going to door-to-door in Pisac and bringing in expert mountaineers, search dogs and drones, her brother said.
Carla’s fearful father pleaded to his daughter in Spanish on Peruvian TV.
“Call me, my child. Let us know where you are,” he said in Spanish, reported TV Peru, a CNN affiliate. “Or ask someone near you for help. Have them call the TV station, have them call the police.”
Carlos remains hopeful that his sister will be found alive.
Book your next trip to make a difference with Girls That Roam Travel. Contact Heather Cassell at Girls That Roam Travel at 415-517-7239 or at .
To contract an original article, purchase reprints or become a media partner, contact .
