One month ago, few outside the social and professional circles of a 30-year-old woman from Hawaii knew her name: Hannah Kobayashi.
Then she boarded a plane to Los Angeles, didn’t take her connecting flight to New York, allegedly sent cryptic messages from her phone and subsequently ceased all contact – worrying her family. They reported her missing and launched an aggressive publicity campaign; now the face and name of Hannah Kobayashi – along with those of her relatives – have been nearly inescapable for weeks.
The narrative around the case, however, is changing. There has been no shortage of dramatic twists, from the death of Hannah’s father to revelations about a possible secret marriage to, just this week, the LAPD classifying her disappearance as voluntary. Even television personality Dog the Bounty Hunter, whose family knows Hannah personally, has weighed in.
Questions not only linger but keep arising. Through it all, however, one fact remains: no one who knows Hannah well, it seems, has heard from her and so, to them at least, she is still missing.
And so now, as more details about her activities and movements trickle out, it’s not hard to imagine that they have more questions than everyone else.
When she boarded a flight from Maui to LA on November 8, Hannah’s family expected her to continue to New York, where the budding photographer had lined up work to take pictures at a DJ gig in Brooklyn and planned to visit relatives, they said.
She never made it to New York, though. Hannah told her family she missed her flight and would sleep at the LA airport, after which, they say, weird and concerning messages were sent from her phone.
“Deep Hackers wiped my identity, stole all of my funds, & have had me on a mind f**k since Friday,” one message to a friend said, according to screenshots her sister sent CNN.
“I got tricked pretty much into giving away all my funds,” said another, which was followed by: “For someone I thought I loved.”
Days after her missed flight, Hannah was pictured visiting various locations around Los Angeles. She went to the upscale Grove shopping center twice, once to visit a bookstore and charge her phone, then again the next day for a LeBron James Nike event.
Her last Instagram post, from November 10, appears to be a black and white photo from this event, datelined “City of Angels, Los Angeles, CA” and accompanied by the Sam Cooke song “A Change is Gonna Come.”
Hannah’s family last heard from her on November 11; her father, Ryan Kobayashi, was among relatives who flew from Hawaii to Los Angeles to look for her and alert authorities.
“Hannah’s last message to us was alarming – she mentioned feeling scared, and that someone might be trying to steal her money and identity,” her aunt, Larie Pidgeon, posted on Facebook on November 14. “She hasn’t been heard from since, and we are gravely concerned for her safety.”
Hannah’s sister, Sydni, established a GoFundMe on November 15 with a $50,000 goal, writing that funds would be used for a media campaign, search efforts, temporary accommodation for family and other immediate needs.
Pidgeon and Ryan were among the relatives who held a rally on November 21 in LA, not far from Hannah’s then last known location.
“Please, please do not stop saying her name, Hannah Kobayashi,” KTLA reported Pidgeon told the crowd. “Your entire family is here. The entire world is looking for you. If you can and you have access, please reach out to us. We’re not mad.”
“If someone has her, I want you to see the pictures we have posted. I want you to see this family, and I want you to know she is so loved. I want you to know that she is so special and kind,” continued Pidgeon, who initially was very visible and vocal throughout the effort to find her niece.
Hannah’s father called her “a beautiful girl inside and out” at the rally, according to the outlet and addressed her directly: “Just reach out, if you can at all.”
Three days later, Ryan Kobayashi’s body was found in a Los Angeles parking lot; it was determined that he died by suicide. Calling his death a “devastating tragedy” in a statement, the family said: “After tirelessly searching throughout Los Angeles for 13 days, Hannah’s father, Ryan Kobayashi, tragically took his own life.”
Still, there was no word from Hannah.
“If she had seen what happened with my father and his passing, she would have definitely reached out by now,” Sydni said this week. “There’s no way that she wouldn’t have reached out, knowing the person that she is.”
Authorities this week continued begging Hannah to contact her loved ones – even after ruling that she’d gone missing voluntarily.
LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell held a press conference on Monday outlining Hannah’s activities since missing her New York connection – including updates that her family insisted were news to them.
“While she did check her bag through to New York, she requested her bag be sent to her at LAX, where we have surveillance footage of her retrieving it from a baggage carousel on November 11,” he said.
Hannah used public transportation to get to LA’s Union Station, where she used her passport and cash to purchase a ticket to get the border, police said at the briefing.
McDonnell said officers “reviewed video surveillance from US Customs and Border Protection, which clearly shows Kobayashi crossing the United States border on foot into Mexico” on November 12 at San Diego’s San Ysidro crossing.
“She was alone with her luggage and appeared unharmed at this time,” he continued, adding that police knew she no longer had her phone with her. “Investigators noted that, before departing Maui, Kobayashi expressed a desire to step away from modern connectivity.”
Lt Douglas Oldfield told reporters that these expressions were found “by looking at her past social media.”
It’s unclear to which posts he was referring, and whether they were public messages. On October 7, Hannah posted a picture of a forest to Instagram with the caption “home will never leave you,” accompanied by emojis; the month before, she posted a photo showing clouds from a plane window with the caption: “when nothing is certain ~anything is possible” and “what does your heart desire?”
Two posts before that, in November 2022, Hannah posted a now distinctive selfie used in much of her family’s search efforts – a photo from a Hawaiian volcano with a caption that begins: “attachment is the root of all suffering.”
Chief McDonnell urged Hannah “to contact her family, law enforcement or personnel at the US Embassy to let us know that she is safe,” he said. “She has a right to her privacy, and we respect her choices, but we also understand that the concern her loved ones feel for her a simple message could reassure those who care about her.”
Hannah’s sister and wider family have refused to accept the police explanation and official decision not to continue the search into Mexico.
“I said this from day one, I feel like she is in danger. I feel like this is completely out of character for her. I’ve known her my entire life,” Sydni told NewsNation the day after the police conference.
Updating the GoFundMe, she wrote: “My family and I are extremely concerned for my sister. This type of behavior is not aligned with Hannah’s character and pattern. The LAPD and law enforcement have not shared any evidence with us. In fact, we learned these facts for the first time on Dec. 2.”
But the twists weren’t over; Hannah’s family is also dealing with revelations that she may have married under mysterious circumstances before her departure. Los Angeles Magazine published a report this week citing unnamed sources claiming she’d been caught up in an immigration marriage scam and cheated out of money in the process; rumors about the marriage have taken off online.
Hannah’s family addressed this through their attorney, Sara Azari.
“A Facebook user sent what looked like a Hawaiian beach wedding photo of Hannah with another man with leis around their necks wearing white, and they said that they learned off of Reddit that there was this sham marriage for money and that this is the wedding picture that’s being circulated on Reddit,” Azari told NewsNation. “Of course, that came as a shock to Hannah’s sister.”
“They want to know that Hannah is safe,” she said. “This is not like her to do this, so they’re just overwhelmed and in shock and concerned,” Azari said. “We now have to be the LAPD here, which is why I came in with my team. We are going to have to go to Mexico.”
One person who will not be going to Mexico is Dog the Bounty Hunter, whose daughters were “good friends” with Hannah and who noted on NewsNation that, the last time he entered the country on the tail of a fugitive, he “was arrested and had to break out of jail and get back to America.”
“She might have done this on her own,” he said of her disappearance. “She didn’t seem like she’s been harmed in any way.”
Hannah’s sister has a more worrying take on the situation.
“They say that they seen her alone, but that doesn’t discount the fact that someone could be watching her from afar, knowing how big this case has gotten and kind of like maybe controlling her or like telling her what to do,” she told Hawaii News Now this week, as the family demanded officials release the border surveillance.
Not all relatives seem to be on the same page, though; Sydni and Pidgeon have begun battling in the press.
Hannah’s sister told NewsNation her aunt had “gone rogue.”
Pidgeon, meanwhile, hit back, telling the New York Post that other family members were throwing her “under the bus” because they “want to be the face … it’s really sad.”
And family members aren’t the only disgruntled ones; there are plenty of online sleuths and donors querying and criticising the fate of the nearly $50,000 raised by Sydni’s GoFundMe – given the determination by authorities that Hannah missed her flight and left the country voluntarily.
There are other factions, still, who’ve taken a different view – those congratulating Hannah for her journey and wishing her well. Her Venmo account has been flooded with donations from strangers in the wake of the news that she’d crossed the southern border.
“Way to make it to Mexico girlie! Have a chicharrone on me!’ one person wrote, according to the Daily Mail.
“Hey girlie! Take a trip to Puerto Vallarta,” the outlet reported that another well-wisher wrote.
Even then, though, many strangers – like the authorities and her relatives themselves – urged Hannah to contact her distraught family.
“Have fun in Mexico... let your family know you’re safe,” another Venmo user wrote, the Daily Mail reported.
Despite that, however, there’s been no word – at least none publicly acknowledged – from Hannah Kobayashi herself.
The public knows her name; now they even know, to some extent, where she likely is. But her social media accounts remain stagnant, and her family keeps clamoring for answers.
“I want her to know that she is loved and she is supported in every way, shape or form,” Sydni told NewsNation this week. “And no matter what she’s going through right now, she needs to know that she has a place to come home to.
“And I can’t stress it enough, like she is such light in our lives, and she’s just such an amazing and beautiful woman, and she’s like, she’s my baby girl, you know, she’s my baby sister … You have so many people who love and care for you that just want to know that you’re genuinely OK, even if you’re not.
“Just something, some sort of like message, phone, call, something.”
