Missing teen found safe in Wyoming, went on road trip, dad says

A Cheviot Hills teen who disappeared Monday morning was found safe Wednesday in Wyoming and had apparently decided to go on a road trip with her friends without telling anyone, her father said.

Caroline Karimi, 18, was pulled over by Wyoming state police as she was passing through the city of Cheyenne.

Her father, Dr. Art Karimi, said he received a call from his daughter about 9:30 p.m.

The teen had last been seen by her family around 7 a.m. on Monday at their house in the 2900 block of Queensbury Street.

They became concerned when she failed to show up at San Gabriel Valley Medical Center, where she volunteers four days a week.

She also missed a 4 p.m. dentist’s appointment, and didn’t come home for dinner Monday night.

She used a credit card to buy gas right after she left home, her father told KTLA.

She was then spotted on surveillance video at a nearby Vons supermarket, where she used her credit card to buy a sandwich, he said.

The video showed her leaving the parking lot alone.

A few minutes later the teenager texted her mother to say that she was on her way to the hospital, but she never arrived.

Karimi has Asperger syndrome, a high-functioning form of autism, which her parents worried was the reason for the change in her behavior.

“She’s easily influenced by people around her, and it makes guiding a child through adolescence and into adulthood extremely difficult,” mother Anita Nathoni said.

“It sounds like she’s trying to be independent, but there are two other children involved. It could be with the influence of the two other children that she’s gotten herself into this predicament,” she said.

Her parents said she told them she has no plans to return home and instead will go straight to college in the fall.

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