A California girl who vanished nearly six years ago has been found alive in North Carolina, more than 2,700 miles from where she was last seen, authorities announced this week.
Karen Rojas, now 11 years old, was discovered safe in Washington County, North Carolina, on Tuesday, March 10, after being kidnapped from Duarte, California, on June 2, 2020, when she was just 5 years old. The Washington County Sheriff’s Office reported that the girl had been enrolled in a local school under an alias—a discovery that cracked open a case that had gone cold for years.
The breakthrough came on March 6, 2026, when Temple Station detectives in Los Angeles received information suggesting the child might be in North Carolina. Four days later, Washington County deputies and school resource officers confirmed Rojas was attending school under a false name and took her into protective custody.
“These are very rare occurrences to have such a positive outcome on such an old case,” the Washington County Sheriff’s Office stated.
According to Fox LA, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department revealed that Rojas’s mother had legal custody at the time of the disappearance but stopped communicating with the Department of Children and Family Services during an active investigation. Authorities believe she then took the child and fled. Sources told ABC11 that the mother was with Rojas in North Carolina when deputies located them, and the two had been living there for several years.
Duarte sits about 20 miles east of Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley. The small city of roughly 21,000 residents became the starting point of a cross-country search that would eventually lead investigators to one of North Carolina’s most rural counties.
Washington County, located in northeastern North Carolina approximately 135 miles from Raleigh, has a population of just over 11,000 residents. The rural county, bordered partially by the Albemarle Sound, became the unlikely location where the long-missing child would eventually be found living what appeared to be an ordinary life—attending school and blending into the small community.
Family abduction cases like this one present unique challenges for law enforcement. According to federal statistics, an estimated 203,900 children were victims of family abduction in a single year, making it one of the most common categories of child disappearance. Unlike stranger kidnappings, family abductions often involve children who may not realize they have been taken illegally. Those holding them frequently establish new identities and routines, making detection difficult.
Children under the age of 6 are most frequently targeted for family abductions, which often occur during custody disputes or when family members take children without legal authority. These cases pose distinct problems because the child may be unwilling to leave their abductor, and other family members sometimes help conceal the child’s whereabouts.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had kept the case active despite the years that passed. The department’s Temple Station, which serves Duarte, can be reached at 626-285-7171 for anyone with additional information about the case.
Due to Rojas’s age and the ongoing investigation, authorities declined to release additional details about the circumstances of her time in North Carolina or the alias she had been using at school. No arrests have been publicly announced in connection with the kidnapping, though the investigation continues.
Some agencies had listed the date of her disappearance as August 11, 2020, though the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services officially reported her missing on July 1, 2020—nearly a month after the June 2 kidnapping date.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had featured Rojas’s case, including age-progressed images showing what she might look like as she grew older. In 2024, the organization reported an overall recovery rate of 91% for missing children cases reported to them—though cases that stretch across years and state lines often prove far more difficult to resolve.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department confirmed it will continue to coordinate with DCFS and North Carolina authorities as the investigation proceeds. For investigators who spent nearly six years searching for Rojas, discovering her alive and safe in a North Carolina classroom represents the outcome they had hoped for but rarely see in cases that grow this cold.
The multi-agency effort that brought this case to resolution—spanning local sheriff’s departments, school resource officers, and child welfare agencies across 2,700 miles—demonstrates what persistent coordination can accomplish even when the trail seems to have gone cold.