Southern California woman disappeared during yoga retreat in Guatemala weeks ago, family says

A Southern California woman has been missing for nearly three weeks in Guatemala, where she traveled in mid-October to attend a yoga retreat for the second year in a row, her family and Guatemala officials said.

Nancy Ng, a 29-year-old from Monterey Park in Los Angeles County, disappeared soon after arriving at the weeklong retreat in Lake Atitlán, according to Guatemalan officials and Ng's family. Her family told the Los Angeles news station KTLA that the organizer of the retreat called them to say Ng had vanished just a few days into her trip, which she had left for on Oct. 14. 

She was officially reported missing later that week, on Oct. 19, according to the description of a GoFundMe campaign launched in the wake of Ng's disappearance. The campaign, to support search and rescue efforts in Lake Atitlán as well as travel expenses and other costs for Ng's family, had raised more than $44,000 as of Tuesday. Money raised through the campaign has primarily financed search and rescue operations in Guatemala, with the funds so far directed toward a helicopter search and rescue team, equipment for volunteer divers, boat rescue teams and, potentially, the use of submarine and sonar equipment, Ng's family said.

Ng was last seen while kayaking with other tourists who had come to Guatemala for the retreat, the Guatemalan Public Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday. She and another person eventually broke off from the group, and they continued to kayak for slightly over a mile into the lake before Ng "decided to jump into the lake to swim, at which point she disappeared," according to the statement. 

At that point, officials say the other person who had been kayaking with Ng turned back to notify the larger group, and, later, the staff of the hotel where they were staying. The hotel manager reported her disappearance to local authorities on Oct. 20, after initial attempts by staff to find Ng were unsuccessful. The others who traveled to Guatemala for the retreat checked out of the hotel that day to return to their homes, the ministry said.

The ministry learned of Ng's disappearance from local police and began its investigation, which has involved visual inspections in the area where she is believed to vanished, as well as inside the room at the hotel where she was staying. Searches were also carried out in the area using dive teams and a helicopter, although the ministry noted that weather conditions in Lake Atitlán have complicated those efforts. The prosecutor's office is coordinating with officials overseas in hopes of collecting statements from any potential witnesses, the ministry said.

The U.S. Department of State and the FBI are involved in investigating Ng's disappearance along with Guatemalan authorities, according to her family, but Tuesday's statement by the ministry gave the most detailed account to date of the events leading up to her going missing. Ng's relatives have said for weeks that a lack of available information about what happened to her posed major challenges for search and rescue operations, mainly blaming people who were with Ng on Oct. 19 for failing to file witness reports.

"The last two weeks have been a living hell because when we first got the news that she was missing, we just had so many questions," Nicky Ng, Nancy's sister, told KTLA in a report published over the weekend. "What happened? Where is she now? Is there a chance she's alive? We didn't know anything."

Updates shared through the family's GoFundMe campaign offer more context. One shared on Oct. 30 — 11 days after Ng was reported missing — said "an extensive search of the lake" had been conducted by a hired professional search and rescue team, along with an air rescue crew, a dive team and local volunteers. Guatemala's National Tourism Assistance Program helped the search and rescue operations get underway.

But the post, written by Nicky Ng's partner Jared Lopez, who created the GoFundMe, noted that search efforts "have been hampered by insufficient information regarding the exact circumstances and location of Nancy's disappearance due to the failure of key witnesses (many of whom have returned to the United States in the past week) to step forward and provide a witness report."

Ng's family has described her as "a caring daughter, a loving sister, and a supportive friend."

"She loves yoga, traveling, hiking with her family, and cuddling with her cat," reads the description on her family's GoFundMe page. "She has a kind heart, a big smile, and can talk to anyone about anything (and often, everything)."

Ng works for the Alhambra Unified School District in Southern California, assisting students with disabilities, KTLA reported. She previously attended university at Cal State L.A. 

"We just don't know because we're lacking that vital information," Sharpe said at the time, according to KTLA. 

In:
• Guatemala
• United States Department of State
• FBI
• California
• Missing Person