Whisper Owen, a 36-year-old mom from Rosemont, CA, east of Sacramento, and her 8-month baby Sandra, disappeared while driving home on the night of Tuesday, July 15, 2025.
It had been a long day for Whisper and Sandra. They left home at 4:00 a.m., with Whisper driving a 2006 Chevy Trailblazer.
Whisper and baby Sandra headed south toward Fresno on Highway 99, a freeway that runs along the east side of the Central Valley.
Whisper formerly lived in Fresno and she was taking Sandra to a well-baby doctor’s appointment.
About three hours later, Whisper and Sandra arrived in Fresno.
They stopped at the home of Whisper’s mom Vickie Torres so that Whisper could prepare a bottle for the baby and change her diaper.
Then they headed to the doctor’s office and arrived on time for the 8:30 a.m. appointment.
After the doctor’s appointment, Whisper and Sandra visited Whisper’s brother Richard Owen, a painting contractor who lives in Fresno with his wife and family.
“The baby had gotten shots,” Richard told me when I interviewed him. “She was fussy and had a fever.”
After leaving Richard’s house, Whisper and Sandra drove back to the home of Whisper’s mom Vickie.
“We spent two hours talking, ” Vickie said when I interviewed her. “Everything was good in her life.”
Whisper left her mom’s house at about 5:00 p.m. but didn’t head off right away. Vickie said she believes Whisper went shopping at a nearby Smart & Final.
“She was down to her last diaper,” said Vickie.
At about 6:30 p.m. on July 15th, not 5:00 p.m. as has been widely reported, Whisper and baby Sandra left Fresno.
Mom and baby were headed back to the Rosemont, where Whisper lives with her longtime boyfriend Robert McCarty.
According to Vickie, the couple were doing well together. “They’d gone on a family trip to Wyoming and had a good time,” Vickie said.
Contrary to what’s been reported, Whisper didn’t live in Elk Grove even though her car was registered there.
Vickie said that by the time Whisper left Fresno, her phone was dead. She also reported that Whisper was suffering from dangerously high blood pressure.
Sixty to ninety minutes after leaving Fresno, Whisper and Sandra stopped off in Atwater, a city in Merced County.
At about 7:45 p.m., Whisper was seen parked outside a smoke shop near the Five Corners area of central Atwater.
Whisper had opened a rear door of the Chevy Trailblazer and was changing Sandra’s diaper.
Shortly after 8:00 p.m. a license plate reader camera in Atwater, a city in Merced, CA, caught the Trailblazer’s license plate number as the car was on the move again.
After that, Whisper, Sandra, and the Chevy Trailblazer vanished.
There’s no evidence to support the speculation online that Whisper was running away from Robert McCarty or that she and Sandra were in danger.
Besides, according to Richard his sister carried only $100 in cash and $600 in food stamps, which wouldn’t get her and the baby very far.
Richard said that Whisper didn’t have a driver’s license, and the left front headlight wasn’t working on the Trailblazer, so she may have taken backroads to avoid being ticketed.
Backroads in the Central Valley can be dark and hard to follow on a night like July 15th where there’s no moon in the sky until the wee hours.
Whisper might’ve had an especially difficult drive in a car with only one headlight and with the other headlight cloudy from age.
Plus, Whisper must have been tired after getting up at 4 a.m. On top of all that she had a fussy baby in the backseat.
But with Whisper’s route passing through multiple rural counties, and because she has a troubled past, her family feels that law enforcement has mostly ignored the disappearance.
“Nobody’s doing anything,” Vickie told me. “They’ve profiled this family as ex-cons and drug users. But that little baby is innocent.”
Richard and his wife Nicole spent two days driving the backroads, but with various rivers, canals, and brushy areas to check, it’s possible they overlooked an accident site.
Nor can foul play be ruled out, even though this seems unlikely.
