On December 17, 2021, Paola Marie Miranda-Rosa had lunch with her mother, grandmother, and uncle at her grandmother’s home near South Semoran Boulevard in Orlando. As she left, she told them she’d see them tomorrow — she was planning to visit her sister Andrea the next day, and her mother was planning to meet her there too. Paola had even picked up a gift to bring along: a robot vacuum for her mom.
She never made it.
Four years later, Paola remains missing. What happened to her in the hours between that ordinary Friday goodbye and the last confirmed images anyone has of her is still, largely, unknown — and her family has spent every one of those four years fighting to keep her case from going quiet.
What We Know
On Saturday, December 18th, Paola woke up early. Her family believes she drove to Wekiwa Springs State Park — a place she knew well and visited often — to hike before heading to her sister’s, which was close by. It wasn’t an unusual plan. She and her family regularly spent time at the park and in the Wekiva River itself; her cousin Cecilia De León has described her as “the swimming fish of the family.”
That morning, two separate hikers happened to catch her on video and in photographs, wading into the river near an area called Otter Camp — despite posted signage limiting swimming there to visitors’ own risk. Neither hiker knew who she was. They just thought it was odd enough, in December, to record.
It’s the last confirmed sighting anyone has of her.
By Saturday afternoon, when the call she and her mother, Ivonne, exchanged constantly hadn’t come, something already felt wrong. Ivonne waited, hoping for an explanation that never arrived. By Sunday, December 19th, she couldn’t wait any longer — she called the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office herself and reported her daughter missing.
The Car
Within days, Paola’s black 2011 Chevrolet HHR was located in the Sand Lake parking lot at Wekiwa Springs State Park. According to Cecilia, it was actually Paola’s own family — not investigators — who found it, after being turned away from the park the day before.
Inside were the kinds of details that make a case like this almost unbearable to sit with: her sandals, sand still on them from a hike of roughly two miles. Her phone. Her wallet. A car key. A lunchbox with juice, snacks, and two sandwiches. A Christmas gift list, partly checked off — she’d already bought presents for her two dogs, who were waiting for her, alone, at home. The Christmas tree lights were still on.
No towel. No change of clothes. Nothing resembling swim gear was ever found with her belongings — though those close to the case who’ve reviewed the hiker footage closely believe she appears to be wearing a swimsuit in it, suggesting she may have planned to get in the water that day after all.
Whatever happened, everything she would have needed to simply leave was left behind.
A Search That Was Real — and Still Wasn’t Enough
Search efforts here were not small. More than 150 personnel, drawn from both Osceola and Orange County, searched the park using aviation, drones, canoes, boats, scuba divers, bloodhounds, and mounted patrol units across several miles of terrain and waterway. Weeks later, once the hiker footage helped narrow the search area, investigators returned with a specialized underwater camera system to search a 4.5-mile stretch of river more closely.
They found nothing. Not a trace.
For a family that has since paid, out of pocket, for their own canine and cadaver-dog searches — which also turned up nothing — the absence of any physical evidence at all has become its own kind of question mark. If something happened to Paola in that park, where is it?
A Family Left to Investigate Alone
In the years since, Paola’s family — especially her cousin Cecilia, who lives nearby and was involved in the search from the very next day — has said publicly, and often, that they’ve had to do the investigating themselves. They say the car was never fingerprinted. They say detectives stopped returning calls. They say basic steps — like accessing Paola’s phone, which they still have but have never been able to unlock — were left undone.
There’s also a detail that’s difficult to leave out: when Paola’s mother first called police, responding officers reportedly did not speak Spanish — in a county that is 56% Latine. Paola’s sister Andrea had to translate over the phone. When the family later shared Paola’s mental health history with investigators, hoping it would add urgency to the case, they say it did the opposite — becoming the public narrative instead of her disappearance itself. Cecilia and Andrea have both directly disputed the specific diagnosis attached to Paola in police statements, saying it doesn’t reflect what actually happened in her past.
By the case’s one-year mark, the family had gone public with a fear they’d carried quietly for months: that Paola might have been trafficked. It’s a theory law enforcement has never confirmed — but also never ruled out. The family has pushed for FBI involvement ever since, an effort complicated by the fact that Wekiwa Springs is a state park, not a federal one.
Notably, Cecilia has also pointed to another case: a woman who narrowly escaped an attempted abduction at the same park roughly a year later. Whether the two incidents are connected remains an open question nobody has formally investigated.
Where Things Stand Now
Four years to the day after Paola disappeared, on December 17, 2025, Crimeline announced a $5,000 reward for information leading to her whereabouts. Osceola County has a new sheriff, Christopher Blackmon, who has publicly committed to bringing the case “back to light.” In January 2026, his office met directly with the family, agreed to re-review the original two weeks of investigation, and granted the family access to records connected to Paola’s phone.
It’s not a resolution. But for a family that has spent years describing indifference as the thing that hurt most, it’s something.
Paola Marie Miranda-Rosa would be 35 years old today. Her case remains open.
If you have any information about what happened to Paola, please contact the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office at 407-348-2222. You can also submit an anonymous tip through Crimeline, which is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to her whereabouts.
Somebody knows something. It’s not too late for that to matter.
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Resources:
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