Kristen Modafferi was heading into what she believed would be the best summer of her life. She had just wrapped up her freshman year at North Carolina State University and enrolled in a summer photography class at the University of California at Berkeley.
Her parents were not thrilled about her spending the summer so far from home, but Kristen wanted to show she could support herself without their help. She searched online, found a room in an old Victorian home in Oakland, and arrived in California on June 1, 1997.
Within days, Kristen landed two part time jobs, and together they paid enough for her to cover her bills comfortably. She began working immediately and spent her afternoons exploring the city, treating San Francisco like a place to learn on foot.
On June 23, she worked her usual shift at Spinelli’s coffee shop in the Crocker Galleria. When she clocked out, she asked coworkers how to get to Baker Beach, near Land’s End Beach, a spot tourists loved for views and photos.
Her photography class started the next day, and she wanted to take pictures at the beach ahead of time. Coworkers explained public transportation routes, and Kristen felt confident she could manage it. She left the coffee shop at 3:00 pm.
She did not walk out of the Galleria right away. Around 3:45 pm, some coworkers noticed her upstairs on the second floor, talking with a blonde woman. No one recognized the woman, and they could not say whether Kristen left with her.
Kristen enjoyed traveling and checking out new places, often taking short day trips around San Francisco. Her housemates did not panic when she did not come home that night because she had stayed out overnight at least once before.
They also did not realize she had missed the first day of her photography class. The alarm only set in when she failed to show up for her next scheduled shift at Spinelli’s, a missed responsibility that felt out of character.
Kristen had a reputation as a brilliant student and a reliable worker. She had skipped a grade in elementary school, yet being younger than classmates never seemed to hold her back. She earned straight As and scored nearly perfectly on her SATs.
When she graduated from Providence High School in 1996, she received a Park Scholarship that covered four years of tuition. Park Scholars were chosen from top students, and Kristen flourished in the program with an industrial design major.
During her first two semesters at the university, she earned straight As again. The pattern was consistent, a young woman who showed up, did the work, and stayed focused. That dependability made her sudden silence feel even louder.
Kristen had traveled widely with her family and even went to Russia on a school trip, yet this summer was her first long stretch away from her parents. At North Carolina State, she could visit them often, and California required more persuasion.
Once she arrived, she called home regularly during her first three weeks. She told her parents she was having a great time, making new friends, and doing plenty of sightseeing. It sounded like the independence she had wanted, and it seemed to be working.
Bob and Debbie Modafferi felt relieved that Kristen appeared to be doing well, and they were starting to relax about her being so far away. Then the calls stopped. The first time they could not reach her, they tried to explain it away.
They reminded themselves her class began on June 24, and she was likely busy settling into a new schedule. On June 25, Bob called the house and left a message with one of her housemates, who promised Kristen would call home.
By the next morning, Kristen still had not returned, and her housemates were growing uneasy. They spoke with coworkers and learned no one had heard from Kristen in more than 48 hours. The situation felt serious, not like a missed call.
One of the housemates phoned Kristen’s parents and explained that no one had seen her for a couple of days. They said they were contacting police to file a missing person report. The worry had moved from private unease into official action.
Oakland Police interviewed Kristen’s coworkers at Spinelli’s and learned she planned to go to the beach on the day she was last seen. No one could say with certainty which beach, though some believed she meant to take photos around Land’s End Beach.
Kristen had not told them whether she planned to go alone. A few people had seen her speaking with a woman before she left the mall, yet her manager felt fairly sure he saw Kristen leave the Galleria by herself.
As Oakland Police continued gathering interviews, dozens of San Francisco police officers and National Park Service rangers began searching the beach areas she might have visited. Bloodhounds helped establish that Kristen left the Galleria and walked to a nearby bus stop.
From there, the dogs tracked her scent to Ocean Beach, a well known tourist area on the west side of San Francisco. The water was cold and rough, so it was not a swimming beach, but people stopped for panoramic views of the coastline.
From Ocean Beach, the bloodhounds followed her scent to the Cliff House, a restaurant and pub with a gift shop that drew tourists. Nearby was a viewing area where visitors watched sea lions swim and rest on rocks.
It seemed likely Kristen paused there to take photographs. The dogs then traced her route through the Sutro Baths and finally to a steep cliff overlooking the ocean. It looked like an ideal place for pictures, yet no one recalled seeing her there.
Searchers found no sign of Kristen, and fears grew that she might have fallen from the cliff and drowned. Rogue waves in the area had knocked people from rocks before, and being swept into the sea was a real danger.
Still, the area was usually crowded, and police believed someone would have noticed if she had gone over the edge. That tension stayed in the background, the geography suggesting one outcome while the presence of people suggested another.
Investigators also considered abduction, but the same crowds made that scenario seem difficult. Taking someone by force without being seen felt unlikely in such a busy place. They tried to identify the blonde woman seen with Kristen at the Galleria.
Witnesses could offer only a thin description. They remembered the woman was blonde and carried a green backpack, and little else. Without more detail, the lead remained a shape without a name, impossible to pin down.
Bob and Debbie arrived in San Francisco the following day to help search for their daughter. Police told them there were no signs of foul play and that they were weighing the possibility Kristen left voluntarily, an idea her parents rejected immediately.
They insisted Kristen was not someone who would run away. She was already spending the summer away from home, so she had no reason to vanish. She was excited for her photography class and looking ahead to her sophomore year in North Carolina.
Her parents could not imagine her walking away from her entire life. The plans were real and close at hand, not distant dreams. In their view, whatever happened was not a choice Kristen made, and they wanted the search treated that way.
People who knew Kristen described her as smart but trusting, and not especially street smart. Coworkers mentioned an incident earlier that summer that bothered them. One evening, Kristen attended a concert at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountainview.
When the concert ended, she missed the last train back to Oakland. She decided she would sleep on a bench in the station, but a young man she met at the concert told her it was unsafe. Kristen agreed to go with him instead.
She spent the night on a couch at his brother’s house. The next morning, the young man drove her to work and later visited her at work a few times. Police located him and determined he had nothing to do with her disappearance.
Even so, the story troubled investigators. Kristen had been fortunate that night, meeting a genuine good Samaritan who made sure she got home safely. Police worried that if she trusted a stranger again, the outcome might have been different.
Kristen’s family offered a $10,000 reward for information about her whereabouts. Tips came in, but detectives could not turn them into solid leads. Family and friends printed missing posters and spread them across the Bay Area, trying to keep faces and details visible.
They even considered psychics, searching for anything that might help. Over time, the calls and tips slowed, and Bob and Debbie feared public interest was fading. They decided they needed national attention to widen the search.
Kristen’s fellow Park Scholars at North Carolina State University were devastated. They were close as a group and felt her absence sharply when classes resumed in the fall. Determined to keep her from being forgotten, they covered campus with fliers about their missing friend.
They also put up yellow ribbons and missing posters throughout Charlotte, making the city itself a reminder. The effort was both practical and symbolic, a visible message that Kristen mattered, and that people were still looking.
In January 1998, the Park Scholars found a way to get the case on national television. ESPN aired the university’s basketball games, so they launched a large yellow ribbon campaign and handed ribbons out at one of the games.
Every spectator received a ribbon to wear. NCAA rules kept players from wearing them during the game, but their coach wore one, and before the game ended, the opposing coach made sure he had one too.
The plan worked. Viewers at home called ESPN to ask about the sea of yellow ribbons, and sportscasters spent a few minutes explaining Kristen’s disappearance. For a moment, a missing student’s name cut through the usual noise of a broadcast.
By May 1998, police said they were certain Kristen had been the victim of foul play, but they remained stuck on what exactly happened. Reviewing evidence again, they noticed something from her room that stood out in a newspaper found in her trash.
Kristen had circled a personal ad in a local paper, and investigators came to believe she might have written it. The ad appeared in the Bay Guardian during a promotion where people could place ads for free the week of June 11.
The text read, “Female seeking friend(s) to share activities, who enjoy music, photography, working out, walks, coffee, or simply exploring the Bay Area. Interested, call me!” It sounded like a young person trying to build a life in a new city.
By the time police grasped the ad’s possible importance, the paper had switched computer systems and purged old files. There was no way to confirm whether Kristen placed the ad or whether she responded to it, leaving detectives with questions and no proof.
They wondered if the blonde woman seen with Kristen on the day she disappeared was someone she met through the ad. Police renewed requests for information about the woman, but she was never identified, and the thread stayed loose.
Kristen’s parents returned to San Francisco repeatedly over the next year. Each trip meant new fliers, new conversations, and another push to keep the case visible. In July 1998, they raised the reward to $25,000, hoping money would move someone to speak.
Police said they believed more than one person knew what happened to Kristen. They urged anyone with information to come forward, even anonymously. The message was blunt, that silence protected the truth, and that truth mattered more than comfort.
That fall, Bob and Debbie appeared on the Maury Povich show, trying to keep their daughter’s case in the public eye. They doubled the reward again to $50,000 for information leading to Kristen or the people responsible for her disappearance.
They still hoped she might be alive, but they also believed she had most likely encountered foul play. They wanted accountability for whoever took her. An anonymous donor gave them 20 billboards around San Francisco to advertise the reward.
Detectives continued to chase every lead that came in, yet they felt trapped in repetition. They were convinced Kristen never made it back from the beach that day, but they had no evidence pointing to a suspect. That changed in May 1999 with a public announcement.
Police said they wanted to question a 37 year old man named Jon Onuma about Kristen’s disappearance. He had been in the San Francisco area when she went missing, but had recently left, and investigators were trying to locate him.
Onuma had been on their radar early in the case. He called in a tip claiming he knew who killed Kristen and where her body had been dumped. He refused to give his name, but police traced the tip back to him and he admitted he made the call.
He told investigators that two women he knew were responsible for killing Kristen. Police interviewed both women and concluded they were not involved. The women had worked at a local YMCA with Jon’s wife and had gotten her fired.
Detectives believed Onuma made the accusation as revenge. With no evidence linking him to Kristen’s disappearance, they first treated it as a failed attempt to hurt those women rather than a real lead. It looked like a cruel lie, until later reports complicated the picture.
In the spring of 1998, three women separately came to police and accused Onuma of crimes ranging from sexual assault to kidnapping. One woman said Onuma told her he was going to kill her, and then she would learn what happened to Kristen Modafferi.
The woman fled, but told police she believed he meant it and that he was responsible for Kristen’s disappearance. Detectives wanted another look at him, but Onuma had left California, and his location was unknown.
The case later appeared on “America’s Most Wanted,” which asked viewers to call if they had information about Kristen’s disappearance or where Onuma could be found. After the segment aired, more than 70 people called in with information.
One tip led detectives to Onuma in Hawaii, where he was living with his girlfriend. Police also believed he had returned to the Bay Area at least once in recent days. Even with that attention, the case remained stubbornly unresolved.
Onuma called detectives and spoke with them for about an hour, denying involvement. He agreed to fly to California and take a lie detector test. Whatever detectives learned did not lead to criminal charges in Kristen’s case.
Investigators never officially cleared him as a suspect, saying only they had no evidence tying him to Kristen. The distinction mattered, a line between certainty and proof. The case stayed open, and suspicion lingered without a courtroom end.
In 2006, the FBI opened a criminal kidnapping investigation into Kristen’s disappearance. The bureau said it had persons of interest over the years, but there was never evidence strong enough to support criminal charges. Tips still came in, but progress slowed.
Kristen’s parents remained committed to finding their daughter and hired a private investigator to help. In 2015, a cadaver dog was brought to the Oakland home where Kristen had lived, and the private detective said the dog seemed to detect human remains in the basement.
At the time Kristen lived there, the house next door was used as a halfway house for parole violators. The private detective believed that lead should have been examined more closely in the earliest days of the investigation. Even so, nothing found has directly linked the home to Kristen.
Kristen Modafferi was 18 years old when she went missing in 1997. She has brown eyes and dark brown hair, and deep dimples in both cheeks when she smiles. At the time, she was 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed 140 pounds.
She was last seen wearing tan pants, a black Spinelli’s t-shirt, a blue plaid flannel shirt, and Fly London sneakers. She carried a green Jansport backpack with two library books and her camera. Anyone with information should contact Oakland Police at 510–238–3641.
