South San Francisco, CA June 18, 2017 from Dan Moss, father of Richard
PREFACE: More on Richard Moss disappearance from Montara CA on May 25th can be found HERE. FB group page HERE, Go Fund Me HERE
Here’s a summary of the events regarding Richard Moss’ Disappearance. We are heartbroken.
Richard Moss was on his way to work and was last seen by a Highway Tunnel Camera on Highway 1 in Northern California between Pacifica and Montara at 7:12 am on Thursday, May 25th heading southbound. https://binged.it/2sCykqU
He had just driven through McDonalds in Pacifica and got his breakfast and appeared to be on his way to work as an electrician apprentice, 3 miles down the road in Moss Beach. He was to report at 7:30 am. He never made it and he and his car have simply vanished. He is 22 years old.
He left a large amount of cash, his wallet with ID, tooth brush, shaving kit, clothes, suit case, etc at home. This has been verified by one of the Detectives working the case from the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office. The only thing we know he had on his person was his debit card because he used it at the McDonald’s to buy breakfast. We think he had his iPhone 7 but either the battery was dead or the phone wasn’t on. The last time the phone pinged a tower with Sprint was the Wednesday before he went missing.
He was driving a blue 2001 Hyundai Tiburon, which is also missing. Lic # 5DWY652
Kathleen and I live in Hawaii and found about his disappearance 6 days after he went missing. We got to the mainland as soon as possible to search for Richard and arrived late Thursday.
On Friday, we met with one of the Detectives handling the missing persons case for Richard. He let us know about everything they had about the case and printed some documents for us. He suggested that we get something going on social media. They stated that they were treating this case as though he voluntarily disappeared. He said they’ve done all they can to find Richard and if we find something, they will investigate. Kathleen and I were devastated. What we heard is that the police are doing nothing to find him and maybe we might find something actionable for them to look into.
We left there and immediately went to FedEx in Millbrae, CA and they were incredible. As an aside, they were the first of literally hundreds of good quality people we were to meet that are helping find Richard Moss. FedEx created the flyer that is posted on the Finding Richard Moss Facebook page, although they don’t normally do that. We printed plenty of them to distribute in the Half Moon Bay/Pacifica, CA area.
We left Millbrae, CA for a town meeting in Montara, CA that we had scheduled with about 10 people that knew Richard was missing. We brainstormed about Richard’s habits and came up with some leads from there, which we shared with the Sheriffs Dept. The meeting was hosted by Linda Brovarney and Richard’s friend Eric.
The question to ourselves, how is it, that in this small area no one knew Richard was gone? It’s simply because no one bothered to let anyone know.
Our family was now in overdrive. Dianna, our niece, created the first Facebook presence with the Group page, Finding Richard Moss. Another niece, Ellen created the GoFundMe page. Richard’s sister, Erin started calling the media and other family members jumped in to help. By Sunday morning, when we were distributing flyers and posters again, everyone knew about Richard missing. I was blown away at the outpouring of support. The people that live on the coast from Half Moon Bay to Pacifica are incredible. So in one day, everyone on the Coast from Half Moon Bay to Pacifica knew about his disappearance due to these efforts.
Saturday, I had a approached a friend of mine, Marc, who manages 30 Café at the Half Moon bay Airport to get a helicopter to look for Richard from the air. You may be wondering why the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Dept wasn’t doing that. As they said to me, that was not a good use of their air resources. I paid $850 for the chopper search with an eye towards $1,200 if the search had gone longer. You pay by the hour for these things I found out and they don’t discount because everyone would want to use them to search for their loved ones. That’s one of the things that makes sense I guess. It occurred to me while searching from the air that it would have been better if one of the people from the Sheriff’s Dept was looking, instead of me as I’m sure they have training for this.
Now we are at day 22 with no actionable leads, other than the tunnel camera. For reasons only the Sheriff’s Dept knows, they did not check the Northbound camera in the tunnel to see if he turned around. For whatever reason they also have not let us know if they checked the camera in Half Moon Bay at Highway 1 and Highway 92. This would definitely help narrow the search.
We have hired a private detective with the GoFundMe Funds. Kathleen and I are planning to travel from Hawaii to the Coast every other weekend until we find Richard. We do need help. Many friends are contributing their Hawaiian Airlines miles. For some reason, Hawaiian Airlines has turned down our request for assistance with the airfare. We just want to pay the offseason fare, not the summer fare. If anyone can help with that, please let us know. We got a family discount with Marriot. Mahalo for that.
This next trip is to take the search to the next level. We are meeting with experienced, knowledgeable people in the areas of searching, media, social media, technology and the like.
Please contact me with any information that will help find our wonderful son Richard.
Mahalo
Dan Moss
(808)343-4110
My friend and I just went back to the location with the ravine and it is called Green Valley. It’s just across from Gray Whale Cove State Beach.
My friend noticed a ravine on the east side of the highway going north towards the tunnel. There is a sign knocked down, but the direction of the sign that is now on the ground is oddly placed in the opposite direction of oncoming traffic. We are now wondering if perhaps there was a deer or something that could have jumped out in front of him, thus swerving into this massive ravine. We really think someone should look further into this circumstance. The ravine is quite deep and the possibility of him being there without anyone being able to see his car amongst all of the plant growth seems plausible.