19-year-old woman safe after all-night search

Officers from Douglas County and the South Lake Tahoe Police Department searched the casino core early Feb. 22 for a 19-year-old Sacramento woman found safe in a hotel room several hours after she sent a text message to friends she was being held against her will.

Deputies responded to the casino core at 3:55 a.m. after the missing woman's friends said they last saw her highly intoxicated at a casino bar with two unidentified men who were buying her drinks.

The friends contacted 911 after they returned to the bar and she was gone.

The friends said they contacted her by cell phone and heard a male voice say a room number before the missing woman's cell phone was turned off.

Security staff and deputies checked rooms with that number in all the Stateline hotels without locating the woman.

Her friends were unable to provide a birth date, Social Security number, address or phone number so she could be listed in the National Crime Information Center.

At 6 a.m., the missing woman's driver's license was located at the Quality Inn motel in South Lake Tahoe where her friends were staying.

A Douglas County Communications dispatcher attempted to track her cell phone but it was off or deactivated.

At 8:30 a.m., officers arrived at the Quality Inn, but the woman's friends still had no contacts. They were able to provide deputies with the woman's picture from her driver's license.

At 8:45 a.m., a Douglas County sergeant, an investigator and three deputies arrived at the casino along with a South Lake Tahoe police officer to distribute pictures of the missing woman at the local casinos.

At 10:25 a.m., dispatch advised the missing woman telephoned her friend that she was in a room at Harrah's casino.

Deputies contacted the woman who said she was all right and voluntarily came to the room with the two males. She said she didn't know who the men were and didn't remember sending text messages to her friends.

The woman denied she had been harmed. She said she passed out when she got to the room and woke up fully clothed and alone.

The woman was asked by security officers to leave the room. She and her friends were issued trespass warnings and asked not to return until they were 21.