A Sacramento family is still searching for answers eight months after Fong Thao, a 42-year-old Army veteran who served two tours in Iraq, disappeared during what should have been an ordinary evening dog walk. Thao, who also goes by Pao, was last seen on December 11, 2025, and his parents, siblings and friends say they have not heard from him since. His family is now organizing another search party at Discovery Park, hoping fresh eyes and renewed attention can turn up a clue that months of searching have not.
According to KCRA, Thao and his wife, Linda Lor, had gone out to walk their dog the night he vanished. At some point during that walk, Thao started walking the other direction, and Lor has not seen him since. He left without his wallet, identification or car keys, details that have deepened the family's worry about how he has managed in the months since. Lor told the station that Thao suffered from insomnia and post-traumatic stress disorder, and that his condition had worsened in the days leading up to his disappearance.
Lor said Thao had experienced panic attacks and ringing in his ears from firing bullets during his military service, lingering effects of the two combat tours he completed in Iraq. He had also talked about self-harm, she said, and had gone to the emergency room for help. But according to the KCRA report, Thao learned he would not get an appointment with the VA until March, a wait that fell squarely in the middle of the mental health crisis his family says he was experiencing when he disappeared.
A Legal Duty to Search Immediately
The Sacramento Police Department used helicopters when Thao first went missing and has continued investigating his disappearance, though it has not located him. Police have received tips about Thao over the months, though none has led to his whereabouts. A department representative identified as Gamble told KCRA that police department members want to know where Thao is and hope he is safe.
Families of missing adults sometimes assume officers must wait before acting, but that is not the law in California. Under Penal Code Section 14211, law enforcement agencies are required to accept missing person reports without delay and begin an immediate investigation, according to the California Department of Justice, with no mandatory 24-hour waiting period regardless of the missing person's age. Thao's case has been entered into the DOJ's statewide missing persons database under Sacramento Police Department Case Number 25-321821, which lists him as last seen wearing a blue sweater, black jacket, white Quiksilver hooded sweatshirt, red tank top, blue jeans and tan shoes, per the state's official missing person record.
Searching the Riverbanks at Discovery Park
Thao's family plans to search the Discovery Park area on August 15, widening the footprint of their volunteer effort as the case stretches toward its ninth month. The park sits at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers and serves as the western trailhead for the 32-mile Jedediah Smith Memorial Trail, according to the Save the American River Association, a 302-acre stretch of dense riparian forest and riverbank that experiences seasonal flooding and swift water currents. It is rugged, sprawling terrain for volunteers to comb through on foot.
The public is urged to contact the Sacramento Police Department with any information about Thao. Lor described her husband as someone who would do anything for his family and friends, a portrait that has driven the grassroots effort to find him. Community updates shared by Hmong advocacy groups in July noted that the family struggled for seven months to secure major news media coverage of Thao's disappearance, relying instead on word of mouth and social media to spread his description. Sacramento County is home to the third-largest Hmong American community in the country, with an estimated 32,000 residents as of 2025, per CBS Sacramento, a network many families in the region have leaned on for support since resettling from Laos beginning in the late 1970s.
A Wider Pattern for Veterans in Crisis
Thao's case is not an isolated one. Research published through the National Institutes of Health found that approximately 23 percent of veterans deployed during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a meta-analysis indexed on PubMed. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has also estimated that 17 to 20 veterans die by suicide each day nationwide, underscoring why advocates treat missing-veteran reports involving statements of self-harm as urgent.
California currently leads the nation in open missing person cases, with more than 3,000 active cases statewide, according to data cited by World Population Review. The state expanded its investigative toolkit this month when it enacted Assembly Bill 2018, which broadens the Missing Persons DNA Program to allow forensic DNA technology to help identify unknown living individuals in open cases, a change from prior law that limited the database to identifying deceased remains, as reported by Fox News.
Sacramento has faced scrutiny over missing-person coordination before. Hoodline previously reported on a family kept waiting years after a missing Navy veteran's body sat unrecorded in a local hospital morgue, a case that pushed for closer scrutiny of how missing patients are tracked across county systems. For now, Thao's family is not waiting on any single agency. They are heading back out along the rivers at Discovery Park, hoping this search succeeds where the last several have not.
