CHARLOTTE, Texas – A panicked family has been doing everything it can to find a 38-year-old father of four who disappeared more than two weeks ago. The family hopes the public will help the Atascosa County Sheriff's Department's active investigation.
Gut-wrenching fear has made 15 days feel like years to the family.
"He's our baby brother," Becky Ramos said.
Surrounded by family, she stifled tears and opened up about Aug. 31, the day Ramiro Garcia disappeared.
"He was eating in Pleasanton with his wife and mother-in-law. He's currently working at Golden Chick in Pleasanton, and apparently he got a phone call. One of the workers asked if he would go in and work for them. He said he had to run an errand and he'd be in later," Ramos said.
Garcia never made it home to his wife and kids that night.
"The next morning when we actually made the report, and they put him in the, I guess there's a database where you put in missing persons, and they got a hit from Frio County," Ramos explained.
Garcia and his family live in Charlotte, in Atascosa County. However, deputies soon located his car in the small town of Bigfoot, in Frio County. The car was not damaged, and it was parked on the side of a private rural road.
The Garcia family now has the car back from investigators, who have poured over it to look for evidence. When they found it, the car was locked, so Ramos said they had to pry it open. Once they got inside, they didn't find any signs of foul play.
Still, the Atascosa County sheriff called it suspicious for someone to disappear in a way the family describes as out of character.
"The fact that he didn't come home or he hasn't called, or he hasn't responded to phone calls or texts, that's really alarming, so we've been actively searching," Ramos said. She explained Garcia is always in contact with his family, especially his wife, on a daily basis.
"The Sheriff's Department went actively searching last week with dogs and they flew a helicopter over to try to see the areas where his car was. The Sheriff's Department discovered his last cellphone activity was on CR 315 and Hwy. 140 in Charlotte right outside of town, so we actively searched that area as well," Ramos said.
She said they have formed their own search party and look for Garcia every day.
"At this point we're obviously speculating he's hurt in some way, not able to contact someone. And so we've been very respectful of people's property, trying not to go onto people's property but just actively searching the back roads. We were out looking, but Bigfoot is a really rural area, so there's a lot of big ranches, there's a lot of brush. Anything could have happened," she said.
She asks anyone in these general areas to search their own private property since her family cannot.
"Our hope is that we will find him no matter what the outcome as long as we can bring him home," she said through tears.
Sheriff's deputies are following several leads. Garcia is 5' 11'' and 160 lbs. He has a birthmark near his left eye and a dimple on his chin. Anyone with information about Garcia's disappearance or who has seen him in the past two weeks is asked to call the Atascosa Sheriff's Department at 830-769-3434.