For six long years, Marina Cabrera endured a pain familiar to thousands of Mexican families: the agony of a missing loved one. But love fueled her perseverance, and her efforts on social media and through search collectives finally paid off when she found her son, Ricardo Omar Serrano Cabrera, alive.
At 34 years old, Ricardo Omar, a mechanic by trade, had left his Mexico City home on August 4, 2017, bound for the municipality of San Luis Río Colorado in Sonora. He hoped to cross into the United States, reported the newspaper El Universal. That was the last his mother, Marina, heard from him.
Frantic, Marina turned to search collectives for assistance, disseminating his photographs and physical characteristics on social media. The posts suggested he could be in a state of destitution and implored readers to contact her with any information about him.
As the years wore on, Marina didn’t waver in her quest to see and embrace her son once more. She kept asking collectives to continue sharing the information. Periodically, they updated it to prevent the case from becoming lost among Mexico’s 100,000-plus missing persons.
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One day, the breakthrough came. A resident of San Luis Río Colorado recognized Ricardo Omar from a post and immediately contacted Marina. He was found in a state of destitution near Yoreme Park, the person reported.
According to Página Central, the Municipal Police were directed to the location specified by the online informant. They found Ricardo Omar and took him to a residence to await the arrival of his parents, Don Jesús, 62, and Marina, 55, who journeyed from Mexico City to collect him.
“Blessed are the eyes of his parents who have seen him and embraced him again, thank God, as the case progresses, I will keep you informed, and share so that those who have posted updates, and to all do not lose faith and hope so that we continue searching and sharing your relatives, do not give up,” the search collective Paloma Elb Buscando Desaparecidos wrote on their social media.