Podcast takes listeners back to night when Tri-Cities girl was abducted
Sofia Juarez walked out of her family’s Kennewick home on Feb. 4, 2003, and has never been seen again.
Instead of celebrating the little girl’s fifth birthday the following day, loved ones joined in a widespread search of the Tri-Cities.
Their efforts came up empty.
For more than 18 years, Kennewick police have repeatedly renewed efforts to solve the case and maybe even find Sofia.
Detectives suspect at least one person is in the know about who took her, but for whatever reason has stayed silent all these years.
They’re hoping that will change, soon, with recent attention from not only local media, but People magazine, Univision and The Vanished Podcast.
“The time that has passed, the number of years that have passed, we know that somebody out there somewhere knows something,” special investigator Al Wehner says at the start of the podcast. “And the reality of it is, is over the last 18 years, relationships change, people’s loyalty changes.”
Wehner — brought in by the Kennewick Police Department to take a closer look at certain cold cases — told the podcast’s host and creator Marissa Jones that he is hopeful someone is ready to clear their conscience and provide the “right tip.”
“We’ve had a lot of tips over the last 18 years. We’ve had literally thousands of tips and we worked each and every one of those, but we need one credible tip,” said Wehner. “And I believe that at some particular point in time, we will get that tip.”
The Vanished Podcast on the Wondery network is a true crime podcast with more than two million listeners each month and more than 85 million downloads. It features a different missing persons case each week.
Jones featured the 2003 kidnapping of Sofia Juarez in August in her podcast’s 301st episode.
She explained to listeners that Kennewick police contacted the podcast earlier this year, but said it ended up being “different than most other cases covered on the show” because her staff was unable to talk with Sofia’s immediate family.
Sofia’s mother died years ago and her father was never involved in her life.
So the podcast staff had to “think outside (their) original format,” explained Jones, and interview Wehner, Kennewick Police Chief Ken Hohenberg and Commander Randy Maynard, who oversaw his department’s response that first night.
Sofia followed her grandmother’s boyfriend out the door shortly after he left on a grocery run.
The little girl was excited to buy some candy, but the boyfriend had already driven away. Meanwhile, her mother thought she had gone with him.
It was only after he returned from the store that family realized Sofia was missing.
Police immediately treated it as a possible abduction, while also thoroughly checking the house, vehicles and neighboring properties in her east Kennewick neighborhood to make sure the little girl wasn’t hiding.
Her disappearance activated the first Amber alert in Washington state.
Earlier this year, police revealed that a motorist saws a brief encounter that night between a girl and a Hispanic boy who was estimated to be 11 to 14 years old.
The boy reportedly approached Sofia and led her away toward a nearby stopped van. He laughed as Sofia was crying.
The encounter happened about 8:30 p.m. Feb. 4, 2003, on the eastern sidewalk along South Washington Street, mid-blown between East 14th and 15th avenues.
The van was stopped on 14th facing west, as if it was going to turn northbound onto Washington but didn’t, even though there was no cross traffic preventing it from pulling out, Wehner previously told the Tri-City Herald.
The witness was at a stop sign, and did not realize they were seeing the initial moments of Sofia’s abduction until the next day upon seeing coverage in the local media about her disappearance.
They positively identified Sofia as the girl after viewing a picture, and police determined the witness was highly credible.
The boy seen with Sofia that night would now be about 29 to 32 years old.
Investigators believe he did not act alone, due to the degree of sophistication needed to abduct a child and the fact that Sofia’s body has never been recovered. They are hopeful he is ready to come forward, both for Sofia’s family and the community.
The case has drawn resurgent interest, not only in the Tri-Cities but nationwide, after a TikTok video surfaced from Mexico this spring.
In the video, a woman with a face strikingly similar to Sofia’s says that she was kidnapped when she was a young child. She also says she does not like birthdays and is reaching out to her grandmother and grandfather to come find her.
It brought in 50 tips to Kennewick police.
The woman, who was homeless, also said during the interview that she had a drug addiction.
Kennewick detectives have been in touch with people who claim to be the featured woman’s family, but they deny she is Sofia. But detectives can’t just drop it, and are trying to have a video chat with the woman and ultimately collect her DNA to compare.
Sofia now would be 23.
In June, Sofia’s case was featured as the “True Crime” story on People TV, a daily streaming show. That 4-minute segment coincided with the release of a story in People magazine.
And Univision is preparing an upcoming segment on Sofia’s kidnapping.
Sofia’s episode can be heard on The Vanished Podcast’s website, in addition to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and other podcast platforms.
Anyone with information on Sofia is asked to visit the “What Happened to Sofia?” website, www.go2kennewick.com/1368/What-Happened-to-Sofia.
They also can contact Special Investigator Al Wehner at 509-582-1331 or al.wehner@ci.kennewick.wa.us, in addition to calling non-emergency dispatch at 509-628-0333.
This story was originally published September 7, 2021 at 5:00 AM.