This is an archival story that predates current editorial management.
This archival content was written, edited, and published prior to LAist's acquisition by its current owner, Southern California Public Radio ("SCPR"). Content, such as language choice and subject matter, in archival articles therefore may not align with SCPR's current editorial standards. To learn more about those standards and why we make this distinction, please click here.
Alisa Wheeler, a 15-year-old teen from Kern County, disappeared without leaving a trace one night in June.
Last week, Wheeler sent her mom a Facebook message with those words every parent wants to hear: I met a 23-year-old man in Mexico, we're married and I'm three months along with his child.
This really did qualify as good news for Wheeler's mom Sheri Simonek, who had feared that once she crossed the border, she would be sold into sex slavery, according to a local ABC affiliate KERO-TV. And last night, Wheeler's mom said that her daughter was finally planning to come home.
So how does a girl from Taft end up in a situation like this? Everyone knew that Wheeler was at risk. Before she went missing, she had been talking about moving to Mexico with her boyfriend Roi. She finally did it. But when she got down there, things didn't work out the way she expected. It turns out that Roi was married, but Wheeler didn't waste much time finding a new guy. She met a guy named Chino, married him and is already three months along in her pregnancy.
But Wheeler didn't give her mom a hint of where she was for the four months that she was in Baja California. When she finally did contact her, she did it through Facebook.
"She told me over and over again how sorry she is she let me down," Simonek told KERO.
Yesterday, Simonek got word that Wheeler was coming home. Simonek has vowed to help Wheeler out in her new marriage: "If that's what makes her happy and for her to come home, I will help him. Whatever I have to do to get his papers."
