Human remains were found Saturday in the Southern California desert during the search for Lauren Cho, who went missing in June, the San Bernardino County sheriff’s department said.
The remains were found in “open desert” of Yucca Valley, the sheriff’s press release said, and added it could be weeks before an identity and cause of death are determined.
Cho, 30, went missing on June 28 from a home in the Yucca Valley where she was staying with friends.
From New Jersey, she reportedly moved to California last year and had been living in Bombay Beach, on the Salton Sea.
At the Yucca Valley property, which a sheriff’s spokesman described as a collection of vacation rentals, she was staying with friends including her ex-boyfriend and working as a private chef.
Her friends reported her missing about three hours after she apparently walked away from the home. They said she was “upset,” and had left behind her personal belongings. She was last seen at 5:10 p.m., wearing a T-shirt and shorts; she didn’t take her phone or a water bottle.
Yucca Valley is about 10 miles west of the town of Joshua Tree.
As the sheriff’s department and volunteers scoured the area, so did Cho’s friends.
“We have gone thousands of miles and tirelessly went to gas stations and pasted up flyers in the low desert, the high desert,” said a friend, Jeff Frost. “We went out to San Diego because she said in the week before she disappeared that she just wanted to go to the beach.”
