Ramona Ayala walked down into the dry wash with the summer sun hammering down on her through short oak trees. She pleaded to Nancy for a sign: to make her or someone from the search crew trip over a rock, to shake a tree, to let them know where her bones were buried.
Ayala has been talking to her, in mind and prayers, for the past two months since she got a tip about where the body of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old woman abducted six months ago from her home in Tucson, might be buried. That woman, she said, was her living mother’s age.
“In my house, I light candles for her. For Nancy. I pray, I leave for her a blessed rosary from Huatabampo and ask her to follow that light, to be in peace, to show us the way,” Ayala said. She is preparing the seventh search for her.
Mexican group Buscando Corazones Nogales searching for the remains of Nancy Guthrie in Nogales, Mexico on May 16 after receiving an anonymous tip.
She lives in the Mexican border city of Nogales, a lively and hectic urban area that sprawls densely over small hills and canyons of the high desert, about 70 miles south of Tucson. The city, 150 years old, is a manufacturing and cross-border trade hub that for a long time has attracted migrants from other Mexican states. The region has seen a recent spike in organized crime violence with the restructuring and fight for dominance of international cartels.
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Ayala makes a living as a real estate agent, but for the past decade has become increasingly dedicated to advocating for vulnerable children and teens, and speaks openly about the roots of violence and the importance of prevention. This work, she said, led her to become involved in the search for missing people who were disappeared by organized crime.
Since November 2025, she has led Buscando Corazones de Nogales, or "Searching Hearts," a mostly-female citizen collective that goes into the outskirts of this and other Sonoran border cities to look for the bodies of those disappeared. Ayala said she doesn’t have a missing relative, but she doesn't need to. Many of the collective's volunteers don't.
“When they ask me what motivated me to join a (search) collective, I say, ‘If this were to happen to me, I would like all Nogales to help me pick up rock by rock.'”
Ramona Ayala, leader of the citizen search group Buscando Corazones, walks near the border wall in Nogales, Sonora. The group looks for missing people, taken by organized crime, to give families closure. They received tips on the supposed location of Nancy
The search for an 84-year-old woman
Searches, she said, create unity and can offer respite to those missing a loved one. They leave the house and do something, breathe fresh air and the scent of trees. They meet others. She hopes the searches also raise more awareness of the underlying issues and shake family members to get more involved with their young.
Her connection to Nancy Guthrie, the mother of "Today" host Savannah Guthrie, began on May 10, Mother’s Day in Mexico.
Ayala received an anonymous call giving clues to the supposed location of Guthrie’s body. The male voice was familiar; it had already led her and the collective to find a clandestine grave with multiple human remains weeks before. The body of a woman matching Guthrie’s description, the tipster told Ayala, was handed to them to bury. She would find it in a shallow grave near a wash west of the Mariposa port of entry, an area well known for clandestine burials.
Descriptions of the site matched those of a ransom letter sent at least to one Tucson television station, KOLD-TV, in which the potential captors told Guthrie family members that Nancy had died from a heart condition shortly after being abducted and she was “buried in nature." This was the second of two letters that the FBI is taking seriously due to clues left in the note.
Mariposa, the area pointed to Ayala by the tipster, is an open desert of rolling hills, desert grasslands, oak woodlands and short rocky ridges, all crossed by desert washes. The search collectives have walked miles in that vast terrain, looking at the ground for signs of sinking, loose earth or burn marks, carrying a metal rod to stick into the ground for a whiff of decomposition.
Buscando Corazones has organized not three searches for Guthrie, as reported in multiple media outlets, but six, Ayala told The Republic. She is preparing a seventh.
After May, Ayala received other calls that narrowed the description of the burial site, south of the international border wall. Ayala said she also received a letter from the entertainment media outlet TMZ, which received at least one other ransom note addressed to the Guthrie family. The last time the tipster called Ayala, he said he would leave a cross so they could find her.
“The motive behind it is conscience,” Ayala said when asked what would move a criminal to take such a risk. “In the deepest recesses they have consciences.”
“This woman,” she added, “didn’t owe them anything.”
A week or so ago, the collective, escorted by Mexican law enforcement for safety, had to leave the search in a hurry because a storm was coming and the area, by the border wall, is known for deadly floods.
Before dark clouds gathered above, she stared across the wide desert wash, past the Normandy-style barrier and below the steel panels of the border wall, and snapped a picture of dozens of wide-open flood gates.
"She is here (in Nogales)," Ayala said over the phone, convinced.
'You've made us walk too much'
A big part of Ayala's life is helping run the Pequeñas Caricias de Jesús youth center that she co-founded 10 years ago to address the food, clothing and education needs of vulnerable kids and youth, encouraging them to continue their studies and make some money with food and clothes sales.
The mother of a 15-year-old, she said youth need more attention, care and opportunities. Months ago, she decided to split from Madres Buscadoras de Sonora, a long-standing women-led search group popular across Mexico, to dedicate more time to prevention work. She hopes that with Buscando Corazones, she and others can go give talks at local high schools and middle schools.
Buscando Corazones, a citizen search group lead by Ramona Ayala, received anonymous calls on the location of Nancy Guthrie's body. They have conducted six search efforts west of the Mariposa port of entry, escorted by Mexican law enforcement
"What they see in TV series and movies that aggrandize mafia, is all a lie. The way you are going to end up," she said as if addressing the students, "is like so many missing people."
"It's all fiction."
Her first contact with search groups was donating energy drinks and food to other collectives. When she joined a search for the very first time, she enjoyed going out, meeting others and seeing firsthand the reality behind Mexico's crisis of enforced disappearances. She decided to stay involved in search groups and do her part in raising empathy, sometimes getting law enforcement involved in the communal lunch they organize when going out to the field, or staying up until 4 a.m. talking over the phone with the mother or sister of a missing person.
When they are out looking, she sometimes speaks out loud to the person: "Come on! You've made us walk too much."
She lights a candle for them the night before. When she lit Nancy's candle, it consumed itself in just two hours. A friend of hers says it's because the spirit can't recognize this place and where she is. She is lost, far from family. She needs light.
Ayala’s belief, as a Mayo Indian and a Holy Trinity Church Catholic, is that the soul wanders when the body is not given a Christian burial.
“Nancy, tell me which are the flowers you liked,” she asked softly while browsing potted plants in Facebook. One with small, delicate white flowers caught her eye.
“I’m going for them tomorrow. I'll bring them to you.”
