Cape Coral, Florida. 29-year-old Lauren Dumolo lived in an apartment in Cape Coral, and she had a young daughter who was the light of her life.
Lauren loved visiting the nearby Four Freedoms Park, and she spent a lot of time there. It was about half a mile from where she lived, so it was easy for her to walk there.
She enjoyed taking the time to have a quiet moment to herself in the park so she could meditate.
A little more than a year ago on June 19th, 2020, Lauren disappeared, and her purse was later found in her favorite park.
Facebook; pictured above is Lauren
On the morning that Lauren went missing, her boyfriend, Gabriel Pena, would later say that he saw her at around 6 a.m.
He then gave Lauren a kiss goodbye and left to go to work, and several hours after he left, Lauren’s cellphone placed a Facebook call to him, but he was unable to answer it.
When Gabriel came home that night, he couldn’t find Lauren anywhere, and he informed her family.
“We knew from that moment something was not right,” Lauren’s sister Cassie Carey wrote in a Facebook post.
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“We had a very uneasy feeling and asked to be informed when she arrived back home. Saturday, June 20, 2020 rolls around, and still no word a wellness check is done at her home there is no response.”
“Sunday, June 21, 2020, Father’s Day this is when we knew this was serious Lauren did not call our father, she never misses a holiday.”
Lauren’s sister and dad reported her as missing to the police, and they then discovered Lauren’s cellphone had been left behind in her apartment.
Lauren’s family also found another cellphone inside of Lauren’s apartment that was not active, and they gave both phones to a detective working on Lauren’s case.
When Cassie met with the detective, she tried to him as much as she could about what had been going on with Lauren in the days leading up to her disappearance.
“I talked to them about the unfavorable characters Lauren knew/was friendly with, I informed him of her mental health state over that past 19 days, I informed them of the abortion she had on May 22nd as well as her history of drug use,” Cassie explained.
“I did not hold back I gave them every bit of information about Lauren the good, the bad, the ugly I wanted them to understand the severity of her disappearance I did not want them to take this lightly at this point we were already at 5/6 days without any form of contact/communication or sight of her and we had no more time to waste.”
Cassie also pointed out that Lauren had been saying that she was being followed before she was placed temporarily in a mental health facility.
Lauren had been released the day before she disappeared, and she was able to get a Lyft to take her home since she did not have her own car.
Later on in the day, she went around her neighborhood applying to some local jobs since she had just lost her job due to the fact that she missed too many days while she trying to manage her mental health.
Cassie talked to Lauren on the phone that evening at around 6:26 p.m., and she recalled her older sister sounding tired and concerned about not having a job.
Cassie promised to help Lauren the next day with getting set up with unemployment and she also wanted to help Lauren better manage her mental health.
Unfortunately, Cassie never got a chance to speak to Lauren further, because the very next day, she vanished.
Facebook; pictured above is a post from Lauren’s sister Cassie
As detectives worked to piece together where Lauren had gone, they learned that after Gabriel had said goodbye to her on the morning of her disappearance, at around 8 a.m., a maintenance man who worked at Lauren’s apartment complex recalled seeing her.
After that, there is simply no sign of Lauren, except for her purse sitting in the Four Freedoms Park which was found that same day that she went missing.
Facebook; pictured above Lauren smiles
Hundreds of leads have come in about Lauren’s disappearance, but she still remains missing, and her family is still left looking for answers.
Authorities do suspect that Lauren is in danger, and they are asking that anyone with knows where she is or who spotted her on or after June 19th of last year to please come forward.
Lauren is now 30-years-old, she weighs 110 pounds, and she is 5’0″. She has brown eyes and light brown colored hair, though it is dyed blonde with brown roots.
“When she was last seen on June 19th, she was wearing a T-shirt and shorts,” the Cape Coral Police Department said in a statement.
“She has several tattoos: “Namaste” on her right side, a symbol on her wrist, a “NY” symbol on her pelvis, and rosary beads on her ankle.”
If you have any information on what happened to Lauren, you can call the Cape Coral Police Department at 239.574.3223 or Walt Zalisko, the private investigator on Lauren’s case, at 855.444.7448.