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Volunteer Dive Team Who Found Kiely Rodni To Lend Their Services To Two Other California Missing Persons Cases
Adventures with Purpose plans to lend their services to search for two other missing women in California, Jolissa Fuentes and Annette Adams.
The volunteer dive team that helped recover the body of missing teen Kiely Rodni is already back in the water to help with two other missing persons cases in California.
Adventures with Purpose—a organization that provides it services to families and law enforcement for free thanks to public donations and revenue from YouTube and merchandising sales—began the search Thursday for 22-year-old Jolissa Fuentes, who disappeared in the early morning hours of August 7.
The search and rescue team spent the day Thursday searching Avocado Lake for the missing woman, after taking a few days off to decompress from the Rodni search effort, according to KMPH.
The group plans to spent three days searching the areas around Pine Flat, the location where Fuentes' phone last pinged before shutting off.
“The water is something we are not able to get into and look deep down so they were perfect,” Fuentes’ aunt Sandra Archuleta said of the effort.
Fuentes was last seen on surveillance footage at the AM/PM gas station in Selma Calif. around 4 a.m. on Aug. 7, Oxygen.com previously reported.
She had been driving alone in her silver 2011 Hyundai Accent, which also remains missing.
Selma Police are investigating the disappearance as a “criminal matter” due to the growing length of time since she went missing.
"There's nothing overtly that leads us to believe that a criminal act occurred,” Selma Police Chief Rudy Alcaraz said at a press conference Monday. “However, Ms. Fuentes has been gone for a long time … and this is not normal behavior for Ms. Fuentes, so we are treating this as a criminal matter.”
Fuentes’ mom, Norma Nuñez, told People her daughter disappeared after getting into a fight with a friend at a party.
"She just said that she had got in an argument at the party with her friend, and that she was going to go to the store, and that she would be right back," she said of their conversation that morning.
She doesn’t believe her daughter would just run off and is desperate to find answers.
“I know she’s not out there willingly. She wouldn’t do this,” Nuñez said. “Something happened to her.”
Using cell phone data to point Adventures with Purpose to the 22-year-old’s last known location, the volunteer search and rescue team plans to help by focusing on nearby waterways.
“When a vehicle is missing, that’s a very alarming thing,” team lead and diver Doug Bishop told People. “And in my experience, there is a likelihood that the vehicle could be underwater, the same way the vehicle could still be out on a trail somewhere.”
While Fuentes’ family and the dive team are hoping they don’t find anything in the deep water, they are hoping the team’s efforts will help them narrow the search area.
"In this scenario, I would love nothing more than for Jolissa to be found safe, and for me to come in and do nothing but say, 'Hey, you guys can 100 percent know that she's not in these areas that I've searched,' that in itself is a success,” Bishop said.
While in California, the team also plans to help in the disappearance of Annette Adams. The 75-year-old disappeared in April of 2021. She was last seen driving a 2020 Black Buick Enclave, license plate number CA 8PNV871, according to the office of California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
In the last two years, Bishop said Adventures with Purpose has helped successfully solve 24 cases and has found 500 submerged vehicles across the United States, including the recent discovery of Rodni’s 2013 Honda CRV.
It took the team less than a hour Sunday to locate the vehicle, along with Rodni’s body inside, using “cutting edge” sonar equipment, the group said in a video statement about the case.
Rodni disappeared in the early morning hours of Aug. 6 after leaving a graduation party at The Prosser Family Campground around 12:30 a.m.
Her car was pulled from nearby Prosser Reservoir on Sunday after the dive team found it 14 feet below the surface about 55 feet from the shore. Authorities have not announced the teen’s cause of death.
“The Placer County Sheriff’s department, Nevada County Sheriff’s department (and) the entire Placer County Sheriff’s Dive team has been incredible to work with,” Bishop said after making the discovery. “We understand that the resource we provide with our unique skillset is rare and it is an honor to help agencies and families all across the nation.”
