Christina Bautista, a 27-year-old Indigenous woman, was last seen in Lakewood at around 4 p.m. Sunday as she headed toward Denver, and her family says they have not been able to reach her since. Her exact last location is unknown, and investigators have not released a description of what she was wearing.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation issued a Missing Indigenous Person Alert for Bautista, according to CBI, describing her as 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighing about 180 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. The agency says Bautista reported being in Lakewood on her way to Denver, but her family lost contact with her afterward and became concerned for her safety. Lakewood sits directly west of Denver, connected by major routes like West Colfax Avenue and U.S. Route 6 over a corridor of roughly 8 to 10 miles, a stretch Hoodline has noted in prior coverage of a search spanning the same municipalities.
Anyone who sees Bautista is asked to call 911 or the Lakewood Police Department at 303-980-7300. Media inquiries about the alert should also go through that same number, as the requesting law enforcement agency.
How Colorado's Alert System Works
Colorado's Missing Indigenous Person Alert program has quickly become the state's most-used emergency alert system, with 67 activations in 2025 and 17 more in just the first few months of 2026, per the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Before an alert can go out, state procedure requires that the person disappeared within Colorado, that their Indigenous descent is verified, that they face a credible threat to their health and safety, and that they have been entered into national and state crime databases.
The alert system exists because of Colorado Senate Bill 22-150, passed in July 2022, which requires local law enforcement agencies to notify the Colorado Bureau of Investigation within eight hours of receiving a missing Indigenous adult's report, or within two hours for a missing child, according to the Colorado General Assembly. The same legislation created a dedicated Office of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives within the state's Department of Public Safety, which now runs an interactive public tracking dashboard and a resource hotline at 833-900-6647 for families, per the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice.
A Pattern of Recovery, and Ongoing Risk
Advocacy tracking by the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Task Force of Colorado shows the system's track record has been largely positive: of more than 170 alerts issued between late 2022 and early 2026, the vast majority of people were located safely, with only five cases remaining unresolved or ending in fatalities as of March 2026. That statistic offers some context for families like Bautista's as the search continues.
Still, the underlying risks that prompted the alert system's creation remain stark. Research from the National Institute of Justice found that more than four in five American Indian and Alaska Native adults, including 84.3% of Indigenous women, have experienced violence in their lifetime. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show the murder rate for Indigenous women is nearly three times that of non-Hispanic white women, with homicide ranking among the leading causes of death for young Indigenous women.
Those disparities trace back to long-documented data gaps. A 2018 study by the Urban Indian Health Institute found 5,712 missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls documented across 71 U.S. cities in 2016, while federal missing persons databases had logged only 116 cases during that same period. If a vehicle becomes part of Bautista's case, state protocol calls for the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to work with the Colorado Department of Transportation to post details on highway Variable Message Signs across state travel corridors.
Bautista's disappearance follows a string of similar alerts issued in the Denver metro area in recent months, including cases involving a missing teen near a Denver school in January and a 13-year-old girl in Colorado Springs later that same month. Investigators have not said whether Bautista was on foot, in a vehicle, or using another mode of transportation when she was last seen, and her exact last location within Lakewood has not been disclosed.
