Rebekah Martinez remained on California's Missing Persons List despite being alive and well.
How can you be on a state government missing persons list while simultaneously appearing on national TV?
If you're Rebekah Martinez, a contestant on ABC's "The Bachelor," it's apparently pretty easy.
The 22-year-old California woman was reported missing on Nov. 18 by her mother, who said she hadn't seen her daughter in six days.
The Humboldt County Sheriff's Office informed the state Attorney General's missing persons database, and up went Martinez's driver's license photo.
This week, the North Coast Journal, an alternative weekly newspaper, posted a story to Facebook about 35 people missing in Humboldt County and asked if anyone had seen the folks whose photographs were displayed.
Amy Bonner O'Brien, a 25-year resident of Humboldt sure as heck knew one of them. "Yep, Rebekah Martinez is on this season of The Bachelor," she posted to the comments section.
Martinez had been on social media and on television, yet she remained on the missing persons list.
The reason seems to have been a communications snafu.
Martinez's mother heard from her daughter late on the same day she had reported her missing. But the sheriff's department didn't know that until December, when they contacted the mom to follow up.
But department policy prevents removing someone from the missing persons list without speaking to the person reported missing. And sheriff's deputies hadn't been able to reach Martinez. Because she was busy filming "The Bachelor."
Finally, on Thursday, the reality TV star and the department connected and her name was pulled from the list.
She took to Twitter Friday to bemoan the photo state officials used on their missing database.
"Honestly the scariest thing about this story is that my efforts to conceal The Worst Driver's License Of All Time have been thwarted," she posted.
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