A Southern California family is pleading for help as the search intensifies for a mother who disappeared while she was supposed to be picking up her child from summer camp.
Angelica Brophy, 44, was last seen on July 6 after dropping off her daughter at a camp in Oceanside. She never returned later that day to bring the child home.
Investigators have traced part of her route through surveillance video and parking records. Footage showed Brophy leaving Harrah’s Resort Southern California, a casino east of Escondido, at about 3:30 p.m. Roughly 50 minutes later, a parking slip placed her at Palomar Mountain State Park, about 15 miles to the northeast.
Brophy, who works as an emergency room nurse at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in San Marcos, has not been heard from since she failed to pick up her daughter. Her husband contacted her brother, Ramon Fabregas, that day to ask whether she had reached out to him.
“Her husband called asking if I’d heard from her,” Fabregas said. “I said no.”
Several days later, Brophy’s vehicle was found at Palomar Mountain State Park.
The discovery prompted her family to alert park rangers, launching a broader search effort in the area. “We found the car Thursday afternoon, and as soon as we found it, we contacted the rangers,” Fabregas said.
The search has centered around Palomar Mountain State Park, where Brophy was known to hike.
Detectives have already tried pinging her cell phone, but the phone is either dead or turned off.
Search teams combed more than 1,800 acres of the park over the weekend but were unable to find her. Divers have now focused their efforts on a pond in the state park.
“They had the command post out there, they had drones, you know, dogs, search dogs, and there were about 40 to 50 volunteers on the last day,” Fabregas said.
“They searched the whole park, no trace of her,” he added.
Flyers for the missing mother describe her as standing 5-foot-5 and weighing around 130 pounds. She was last seen wearing black leggings and a gray T-shirt. Anyone with information on her disappearance is urged to contact the Oceanside Police Department, which is leading the investigation.
The family distributed the missing-person posters in the Palomar Mountain, Temecula, Rincon, and Pauma Valley areas on Sunday.
Oceanside Police Captain Nick Nunez told NBC San Diego that no evidence of foul play is suspected in her disappearance. But Nunez said police are checking with Harrah’s casino to see if anyone was with her or following her.
Her family is desperate to see the mother again.
“She is one of the most wonderful, thoughtful women that I know,” Brophy’s sister-in-law, Lisa Fabregas, told NBC San Diego. “She’s a very good mom. She will do anything for her children.”
“She loves life and we really just need her back,” she added.
