After nearly three months, a missing mother who was being pursued by a national network of private investigators, turned up in a Denver jail.
Mother of four Azia Diane Saldana, 33, from Torrington, Wyoming, had not been seen by her family since she left their home on August 26.
Despite being missing, police “received a number of pieces of information” connecting Azia to the Denver metro area, promoting a desperate search by private investigators and public appeals for help from her family.
Then last month Azia suddenly turned back up when she was booked into a Denver jail on suspicion of felony possession and distribution of fentanyl.
Azia also faces misdemeanor charges of careless driving, failing to report an accident and driving without insurance.
She is being held at the Downtown Detention Center on a bond of $5,000. She also faces an additional Wyoming warrant for earlier drug offenses.
Stacy Koester, a volunteer private investigator with Road Warriors for the Missing, a national network of volunteer investigators, has been working on Saldana’s case since she was reported missing.
Koester said the first indication that Azia was alive and well was when her mother, Lisa, started getting emails from lawyers offering to assist with Azia’s case.
“I contacted one of the lawyers, and he gave me insight on how to look up new cases and recent arrests,” she said. “That’s how we were able to locate her.”
Koester said the Saldana family was relieved despite the circumstances. They think Azia will be safe for now but many questions remain unanswered.
“We do not know what happened to her in the three months nobody heard from her,” Koester said.
“We still do not know what was done to her, where she was or who she was with. We can’t say she was ever safe. The only thing we can say now is she’s safe because she’s incarcerated.”
Azia had left her parents’ home around 4:30 p.m. Aug. 26 to go to the Western Travel Terminal, a truck stop in Torrington, to play the slot machines. She sent a text message to her mother that evening saying that she would be home shortly after 8. She never made it.
Azia’a mother, Lisa Saldana, said the family was grateful for the help and support it had had since the search began for her daughter.
“I would like to start out with a big ‘thank you’ to Stacy Koester and her team for all the time, help, support, dedication and love that they have given to me through all of this,” she said.
Saldana said she has spoken “briefly” with her daughter since she resurfaced, but “she has not disclosed any information about what or where she has been through.”
She also made a plea for people to not pre-judge her daughter. “I can tell you that her being incarcerated has nothing to do with her being missing.”.
“Azia has been through the legal system and has been harshly judged by so many. These charges are from the past and (being missing) would have never kept her from facing them!”
“Thanks be to God my Azia has been found. Now we focus on her and whatever it may be that she will go through and need!”
