Missing Persons

Red Cross authorities say that a local surfer went missing off the coast of Caldera on the central Pacific coast Friday afternoon and has not been found.

Organizers of Costa Rica's grueling cross-country bike race Ruta de los Conquistadores are reporting that a Red Cross patrol has located U.S. cyclist Mark Lyons of Denver, Colorado. He reportedly is in good condition.

Costa Rica's Talamanca Mountains are among the most remotes places in Central America. Far from major cities, thick with tropical jungle, rivers, venomous snakes and cold mountaintops, the region is practically inhospitable. This is where an airplane with 68 Argentine Air Force cadets on board disappeared without a trace in 1965.

More than two months after his father disappeared, Jeff Hogue hasn’t lost hope. As Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) continue to search for Brian Hogue, who has been missing since June, Jeff Hogue traveled to Costa Rica to meet with his father's friends in search of clues to his whereabouts.

David Gimelfarb had traveled to Costa Rica alone for a brief vacation before he was to return to his doctoral studies in psychology in Chicago. On the morning of Aug. 11, 2009, David left his passport and other possessions in his Guanacaste hotel, drove a rental car to the national park, signed the park’s logbook and vanished.

A Facebook page set up by the family of missing 20-year-old Alysson Mercier from Gatineau, Quebec, includes a post from a user named Edgar Mata who claimed to have seen Mercier in La Fortuna, San Carlos, near Arenal Volcano, on Monday, July 20, a day after Mercier's family last heard from her.

The National Coast Guard Service on Saturday recovered the body of a 52-year-old U.S. tourist who drowned while swimming off Flamingo Beach, in the province of Guanacaste.

Public Security Ministry officials have reported the first successful test of a new emergency system for broadcasting alerts following the disappearance of a minor, known as SAN. The first alert helped locate a 13-year-old girl who was reported missing on Monday in the Alajuela canton of San Ramón.

Brian Lynn Hogue, 64, disappeared while driving from San José to Guápiles, where he lives on a farm with his wife, Susan, and their son, according to a statement from his family. He was planning to return to the United States this week to attend his daughter’s wedding before he went missing.

A missing U.S. swimmer in the central Pacific Costa Rican beach town of Jacó has been identified as Patrol Officer Richard Jean-Georges, from Bristol, Rhode Island, in the United States.