Miami Police are asking for the public's help finding a 61-year-old woman who vanished from the city's Flagami neighborhood earlier this week. Caridad Garcia was last seen on Tuesday, and investigators have not said what she was wearing at the time she disappeared.
Garcia is described as standing 5 feet tall, with black hair and brown eyes, according to WSVN. Miami Police say she was last seen in the Flagami area, and anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to call 305-603-6300 or 305-579-6111.
Flagami sits on Miami's western edge, a name born from the intersection of Flagler Street and the Tamiami Trail that cuts through its core, bounded to the west by Red Road, per Wikipedia. The neighborhood is home to more than 50,000 residents, most of them Hispanic and Cuban-American, living among older single-family homes, duplexes, and apartment buildings largely constructed between 1940 and 1969, according to NeighborhoodScout. That dense mix of residential blocks and commercial strips typically means investigators lean heavily on tips from neighbors and passersby during searches like this one.
How Missing Adult Cases Move Through the System
Florida law does not require families or police to wait any set period, such as 24 or 48 hours, before filing an official missing person report, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Once a report is taken, state law requires agencies to enter the information into the Florida Crime Information Center and National Crime Information Center databases as soon as possible, and no later than two hours after the report is received, per the North Miami Police Department. That rapid entry is designed to push out Be-On-the-Lookout notices to patrol officers across the region without delay.
It remains unclear whether Garcia's case meets the criteria for a statewide Silver Alert, which requires a missing person to be at least 60 years old, or 18 to 59 with verified cognitive impairment, along with a law-enforcement-confirmed condition like Alzheimer's disease or dementia, per the FDLE's Silver Alert guidelines. Age alone does not trigger the alert. Separately, Florida's Purple Alert system, updated under a 2024 state law, covers missing adults with intellectual, developmental, or physical disabilities who are determined to be in immediate danger, a distinct standard from Silver Alert criteria.
A Recurring Pattern in Flagami
This is not the first time this year that Miami Police have appealed to the public over someone missing from Flagami. Hoodline reported on a search for 24-year-old Felipe Lopez in February, and last year covered the search for 87-year-old Jose Mejia Berroa, who also went missing from the neighborhood. Florida has consistently ranked among the top states nationally for open missing person cases, with 289 open cases recorded in a single late-2025 monthly report cited by the FDLE and the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.
Anyone with information can also call Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS, where Florida law makes it a criminal offense to reveal a tipster's identity, guaranteeing anonymity to those who come forward. In Miami-Dade County, Special Victims Bureau victim advocates work alongside missing person detectives around the clock, offering crisis intervention and support to families while investigators pursue leads on the ground.
