It’s been decades of agony for a family. In July of 1980, Maricela Rocha Parga of Los Angeles disappeared. The 22-year-old nursing student and mother of a two-year-old vanished without a trace. The family had no way of knowing it would take nearly half a century for them to find the painful answer to the mystery, and that it would come in Ventura County.
“We were both very young. I was nine, and my sister was ten. I remember Maricela as a very, very loving older sister. She was just a joy,” said Reynaldo Rocha. He and his sister Alma Yvonne Braden realized something was wrong when Maricela failed to show up as planned with a cake for Alma’s 10th birthday party.
“I remember seeing her smile, and her caring, and her loving self coming to give me a hug,” said Braden. “I knew there was something wrong when she didn’t show up with that cake. My older sister kept hope. I knew even at ten years old, Maricela wasn’t going to come back.”…