TRUCKEE, Calif. (KTXL) — The search continues Monday night for missing Truckee teenager Kiely Rodni, who was last seen at a party she attended at a campground early Saturday morning.
Her family and friends are doing everything they can to get her information out and coordinate searches.
Friends and family of Rodni gathered at the Truckee Recreational Center to support one another and pray for her safe return home. The rec center has become ground zero for coordinating their searches, along with giving and receiving any information on her whereabouts.
“I have kind of a combination of fear and horror and disbelief,” Lindsey Rodni Nieman, Kiely’s mom, said.
It’s that punch to the gut kind of feeling only a mother can know when her child goes missing. She last saw Kiely Rodni Friday morning, before leaving for Hot August Nights in Reno.
Kiely decided to attend a Senior Farewell Party at the Prosser Family Campground, just off Highway 89.
“We got home around 11, and she sent me a text at around 11:30, telling me that she was going to be leaving at about 12:15 and coming home. And I asked her to wake me up when she got in. That was always kind of what we did. And she said, ‘OK, mama. Love you.’ And that was the last,” Lindsey Rodni Nieman said.
“The party was only supposed to be open to those in the Truckee Tahoe region. But word got out to Grass Valley, Reno and the Bay Area,” Sami Smith, a close friend, said. ”It grew to be way, way larger than ever expected.”
“Within the only 10 minutes I was there, I literally had a group of five guys, try to come get me to take as many bong rips as I could forcefully, without my boyfriend present,” Magdalene Larson, Keily’s best friend, said.
“There was a lot of guys that did approach us,” Smith said. “Definitely, I was getting a gut feeling that during that party that something, something just didn’t feel right with the number of people that were there and how old some of these people were.”
“From the number of people who did show up, it was scary. It was really scary,” Smith recalled.
Kiely’s 2013 silver Honda CRV is also missing. The Placer County Sheriff’s Office is investigating her disappearance as a possible abduction.
“Because nobody has said that they saw her leave they can’t say for sure what’s happened,” Lindsey Rodni Nieman said.
But she wants her daughter to know what’s in her heart, along with her plea:
“Kiely, I love you so, so, so, so much. And I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, and we’re doing everything that we can,” Lindsey Rodni Nieman said. “And if you have her, please, please give me my baby back.”