Missing photographer Hannah Kobayashi traced to Mexico, but still in danger: ‘They don’t have many safeguards down there’
Missing Hawaii resident Hannah Kobayashi is in significant danger traveling alone in Mexico, a private investigator looking for her told The Post.
The 30-year-old aspiring photographer was reported missing by her family on Nov. 11 after failing to board a connecting flight in Los Angeles and leaving the airport.
Authorities announced Monday she was last seen on Nov. 12 heading into Mexico after taking a bus to the border — crossing into Baja California, a territory riddled with crime, murders, sex trafficking and kidnapping in the last year.
“A single female who is pulling her suitcase around, you’re basically highlighting, ‘Hey, I don’t know where I’m staying.’ It would be dangerous. I believe she’s in a fragile mental state and that sets her up for being taken advantage of,” Steve Fischer, a private investigator who has been searching for Kobayashi, told The Post.
“There are these communities south of Tijuana — are they super safe for a female traveling by herself? No.”
Worrying texts from Kobayashi’s phone were sent to friends shortly before her disappearance, including one saying she’d had a “very intense spiritual awakening” and another claiming “deep hackers wiped my identity, stole all my funds.”
Still, Los Angeles police say they have evidence that she went to Mexico by herself and is “classified a voluntary missing person.”
Fischer believes Kobayashi may have sought refuge 50 miles south of Tijuana in a surf community that’s become a haven for nomads for its cluster of surf breaks at Kilometer 38 of Baja Highway 1.
“It’s a community she might even be at. There’s a K38 surf community around that area you find a lot of nomads. It’s cheap, but it’s not free,” he said.
Baja is a tourist destination for surfers, solo travelers and psychedelic retreats, but has been a gateway for organized crime, violence, drugs, kidnappings and murders, particularly in Tijuana, the biggest border city in Mexico, into which Kobayashi crossed.
In May, four bodies were discovered in a 50-foot-deep well in Baja including an American and two Australian surfers. They were said to be camping out at the surfers beach La Bocana in the Mexican countryside, just 130 miles south of San Diego, when they were reported missing.
Mexico saw more than 30,000 homicides for the sixth consecutive year, and more than 100,000 people are also missing, the Guardian reported.
And Fischer fears that the California-Mexico border, which attracts many runaways and solo travelers, is especially dangerous for women traveling on foot or by bus.
“They don’t have many safeguards down there,” Fischer warned.
Paul Katz, a Los Angeles private investigator, told The Post that Kobayashi being in Mexico adds another layer of complications.
“Mexico is an entire country, and once she goes over the border, she could be anywhere,” Katz told The Post, noting her family should work with a local investigator who is familiar with the territory.
Katz told The Post that conducting a missing persons case in drug-ridden areas like Mexico requires a lot of manpower and money — and will be harder for the family to manage from the US.
“Finding people is incredibly hard. I do a lot of missing people cases. Recently I was in San Francisco looking for a person. It took six guys, combing the Tenderloin [a notorious drug district], day after day — a lot of money later, we found him,” Katz said.
He also expressed concerns for Kobayashi’s safety.
“She went over the border by herself with just a suitcase? That immediately makes her a target for cartels, sex traffickers … it sounds like she may have had a mental health break,” he said.
The Kobayashi family declined to comment for this story.
Kobayashi flew from Maui to Los Angeles on Nov. 8 and was slated to depart on a connecting flight to New York City.
She was traveling with an ex-boyfriend, who is cooperating with authorities in searching for Kobayashi, but she instead left Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).
Authorities said they believe Kobayashi dumped her phone sometime before heading to Mexico.
An ex-roommate who lived with Kobayashi in Maui suggested the breakup with her ex may have had her in a fragile state.
“There may be some underlying stress from the breakup,” the ex-roommate told The Post, recalling a time when Kobayashi confided in her that her ex-boyfriend had “freaked out on all her friends” one night.
Kobayashi’s ex-boyfriend did not respond to requests for comment from The Post.
Although there is online speculation that Kobayashi could be tied to the Twin Flames New Age spiritualism movement, which some have called a cult, another friend told The Post she feels it is unlikely she would have joined.
“I don’t feel like that resonates with the Hannah I knew. We hung out in Maui. We spent nights together. I feel like we were already so playfully in tune that I wouldn’t be able to comprehend why she would want to join a dangerous cult and go off with friends.
“I also feel like she knows how loved and supported she is. I don’t feel like this is like her to make people concerned,” said Ariana Ursua, a 30-year-old freelancer who met Kobayashi in 2017.
