Ceci Patricia Flores has spent years looking for her sons — who've been missing since 2015 and 2019.
She ultimately founded Madres Buscadoras de Sonora, a volunteer collective that searches for people throughout the country — often setting out with shovels to sift through vast stretches of desert.
Many volunteers, like Flores, are mothers.
Speaking about the missing persons crisis in Mexico, she emphasized that disappearances impact entire families — particularly children and grandchildren who are left searching for answers about their loved ones.
“It’s not just a disappeared person. It’s a life that’s been shattered — a family that’s been shattered,” she told AZPM in Spanish.
Each day, the Madres Buscadoras de Sonora updates its Facebook page, flooding the internet with photographs of missing people. The portraits range, as do the stories behind them: A 15-year-old girl with dark hair, last seen in Jalisco; a 64-year-old man with a white mustache, last seen in Sinaloa. Some have been missing for days; others for years.
“We’re not looking for culprits, or justice,” the collective often writes under its posts, imploring the public for anonymous tips. “We just want our children to come home.”
Last week, the group added another entry to its Facebook page: a smiling portrait of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie. Telemundo Arizona, who first reported this story, joined other members of the collective as they surveyed the outside of Guthrie’s home last week.
Speaking to AZPM, Flores said she’d found out about Guthrie from a journalist who’d reached out to her. The group is assisting in search efforts both in Tucson and Sonora, Flores added.
In a statement Saturday, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department noted in a statement that volunteer groups had “inquired about being in the area,” but did not mention a specific group.
“Per the sheriff, they were asked to please give investigators the space they need to do their work. We appreciate their concern, and we all want to find Nancy, but this work is best left to professionals,” the statement said.
It comes as the Guthrie investigation stretches into its fourth week. Authorities have not publicly identified a suspect.
Mexico Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch said there was “no indication” that Guthrie had been brought into the country, The New York Times reported Friday.
Meanwhile, the Madres Buscadoras de Sonora continues its other back-to-back searches in Mexico, where disappearances have swelled in recent years. As of Feb. 23, a registry maintained by the Mexican government estimates 131,853 people are either disappeared or missing throughout the country.
The group, over the years, has uncovered missing people and clandestine graves; in 2024, volunteers discovered a mass grave in a remote area along the Sonoran coast. After the discovery, state authorities identified 45 sets of remains from the area.
