Sofia Lucerno Juarez

Case background and investigation

Sofia Lucerno Juarez was a four-year-old girl living in Kennewick, Washington. On the evening of February 4, 2003, the night before her fifth birthday, she was at her family's home in the 100 block of East 15th Avenue. Around 8 p.m., Sofia decided she wanted to tag along with her grandmother's boyfriend, Jose Lopez Torres, who was walking to a nearby convenience store. He left without realizing she intended to follow, and Sofia slipped out of the house after him. She never reached the store, and she was never seen again.

When the family realized Sofia was missing, Kennewick police launched an immediate search. The case prompted the first use of an Amber Alert in Washington state history, an alert that remained active for about 36 hours. Volunteers combed neighborhoods and parks, and flyers and posters were distributed across the region. Sofia had last been seen wearing a red long-sleeved shirt, blue overalls, violet socks, and white Converse sneakers, with gold hoop earrings. Despite the rapid and extensive response, she seemed to have vanished without a trace within blocks of her own home.

One account has shaped the investigation. A witness reported seeing a young girl matching Sofia's description crying as she was led toward a van by a male near South Washington Street and East 15th Avenue on the night she disappeared. In 2021, police released a description of that individual as a Hispanic juvenile male, estimated to be 11 to 14 years old at the time. Over the years, detectives have investigated more than 800 tips, and the case file has grown to more than 20,000 pages, but no suspect has been charged and Sofia's whereabouts remain unknown.

Investigators created a DNA profile for Sofia and entered it into the FBI's Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, so it can be compared against unidentified remains found anywhere in the country. That comparison has never produced a match. In more recent years, viral social-media claims from people suggesting they might be Sofia have periodically surfaced, but DNA testing has ruled each of them out. Sofia's mother, Maria, died without ever learning what happened to her daughter. The Kennewick Police Department continues to treat the case as active, and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children circulates age-progressed images of Sofia. More than two decades after a little girl walked out her door the night before her birthday, her disappearance remains one of Washington's most heartbreaking unsolved cases, and the community still marks her birthday each year in her memory.