NOGALES, AZ — This week marks five months since Nancy Guthrie disappeared, and the Arizona case continues to touch hearts, even resonating across the border.
In the shadow of the border, mothers, daughters, and friends raise their voices through the streets of Nogales, Mexico.
“¿Nuestros hijos, dónde están?” they chant during a march through the downtown, translated to, “Where are our children?”
They are volunteers with the group Buscando Corazones, or Searching For Hearts. The group is dedicated to searching for Guthrie, and say they are not giving up, even as they also look for their own loved ones. Most members of Buscando Corazone have a missing family member.
Among the faces of their own missing relatives, on a street pole just beside their march Monday, there is another face that’s captured international attention: Nancy Guthrie.
“We beg you now, to return our mother to us,” Guthrie’s daughter, Savannah Guthrie, previously said, sitting alongside her siblings, in a video she posted to her social media accounts.
Authorities believe the 84-year-old mother of “TODAY Show” host Savannah Guthrie was taken from her Tucson-area home against her will. She was last scene on January 31st and reported missing the next day on February 1st.
“Nancy is a mother,” Luz del Rayo Lopez Carrillo, a member of Buscando Corazones, said in Spanish. “Because of that, we have to search for her—no matter her nationality, no matter whether she's rich or poor. To us, she's a mother, just like we are, and that's why we're searching for her.”
The group began searching the desert near Mariposa in mid-May, following an anonymous tip. They have now searched three times, and say they will keep going back.
“Every time we go out, we hope to bring a heart, a treasure, back home,” Guadalupe Ramona Ayala Ortiz, Buscando Corazones, said in Spanish.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos posted on social media that his department is aware of the searches, but has not been contacted by Mexican authorities. The post reads:
“We are aware of reports regarding an anonymous tip related to the Nancy Guthrie investigation that was provided to a group in Mexico. At this time, we have not been contacted by Mexican authorities. The investigation remains active and ongoing, and we will continue to follow up on any credible information.” – Chris Nanos, Sheriff
Former FBI agent Brad Garrett tells ABC15 it is important that law enforcement oversees these types of group searches.
“You really have to have law enforcement's hands on there, because evidence could get destroyed,” Garrett said.
Accompanied by police on their marches and during searches, Buscando Corazones knows what’s at stake.
In April, the group says they helped discover a clandestine grave containing about 30 bodies.
“It’s an undignified death. It's a death of abandonment,” Lopez Carrillo said.
A solemn discovery, highlighting Mexico’s larger missing persons crisis
“We don't search for someone else's child. We search as if they're our own,” Lopez Carrillo said. “We take on that identity. Maybe Nancy's family can't come search for her, but my fellow volunteers and I can search in her place.”
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These women aren’t just volunteers: they are mothers, searching for their own children.
“They didn't just make my son disappear; they made our entire family disappear,” Alma Griselda Ramirez Games, Buscando Corazones, said in Spanish. Her missing son is Pablo Ivan Dorame Ramirez.
They are left with what they call unbearable thoughts of the unknown.
“We don't know where he is, how he is, whether he's alive, if he's being tortured... if he's being forced to do work he doesn't want to do, if they're forcing him into drugs,” Lopez Carrillo said about her missing son, Dante Esau Lopez Carrillo. “It's incredibly difficult.”
As the group says they are tracking nearly 650 people missing in Nogales, they want the faces of those lost to be visible.
“For mothers and fathers searching for their loved ones, there are no holidays,” Elizabeth Lopez Vazquez, Buscando Corazones, said in Spanish. “There's always an empty place at the table, because someone is missing.”
Lopez Vazquez’s missing son is Vicente Acosta Lopez.
Like the Guthrie family, they know the pain of not having answers.
“To whoever has her, or knows where she is, it is never too late to do the right thing,” Savannah Guthrie previously said in a video posted on social media.
Buscando Corazones says until every family can bring their loved one home, they will keep searching.
“Together, we become one mother,” Lopez Carrillo said
Tips in the Nancy Guthrie case can be submitted anonymously by contacting the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov, or the Pima County Sheriff’s Department at 520-351-4600.
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