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For more than two decades, Tiffany Reid’s family has been haunted by her disappearance.
The teen vanished May 17, 2004, launching a years-long quest for her loved ones and forever altering the trajectory of older sister Deiandra Reid’s life, pushing her into advocacy to help other families of murdered and missing indigenous women.
Now, the Dateline: Missing in America podcast is taking a new look at Tiffany’s case in the hopes that new evidence could finally help bring their loved one home.
What happened to Tiffany Reid?
Tiffany was just 16 years old when she disappeared on her way to school that Monday morning all those years ago.
Tiffany, who like most teenage girls loved doing her hair and developing her own style, asked her sister for a ride to Shiprock Northwest High School in New Mexico, but Deiandra — who’d just gotten home from work — said no, leaving her with a lifelong regret.
“I was just tired,” Deiandra remembered. “You know, I had gotten off working a graveyard shift, so I didn’t have the energy to get up and drive her to school.”
That night, Deiandra’s mom called her to tell her that Tiffany hadn’t come home. Deiandra thought her sister might just be out with friends, but the next morning her panicked mom called her again.
Though Deiandra wasn’t concerned at first, she felt “a little worried” when her mom called again the next morning to see if she had heard from Tiffany. “Just the tone of my mom’s voice and the panic that she had, it was different. I feel like maybe it was a mother’s intuition telling her that something was wrong,” she said.
Who is Tiffany Reid?
The siblings grew up on a farm in Shiprock, a small community on the Navajo Reservation in San Juan County. According to Deiandra, who was four years older, their parents were often fighting.
“There was a lot of violence in our home when we were younger,” she said. “Being the older sister, I always tried to shield my little sister from that, just so she…wasn’t too exposed to it.”
Their parents divorced when Tiffany was about 8 years old.
Then, when Deiandra moved out, Tiffany had to assume more responsibility in the house, especially after their mother was diagnosed with cancer. The once quiet Tiffany was just finding her voice when she disappeared.
“She was really talented and…creative,” Deiandra recalled. “She wrote a lot of poetry. She wrote her songs. She used to sing. She used to like dancing.”
Few leads emerge in the search for Tiffany
When Tiffany’s mother called school officials, she learned that Tiffany never made it to class on the day she disappeared.
She also called the Shiprock District of the Navajo Nation Police Department to try to file a missing persons report, but according to Deiandra, the case was initially viewed as a potential runaway case and authorities told her mom to wait 72 hours before filing a report.
Deiandra doesn’t believe her sister would have run away, pointing out that Tiffany had been doing well in school and had a close group of friends.
“When she left, she left with her school bag, like she really intended on going to school,” she said. “I didn’t see her carrying an additional bag or anything with her to indicate that she wasn’t going to be coming home.”
As the family waited for the 72 hours to pass, they searched for Tiffany, spoke with her friends, and put up flyers, but no one had heard from the missing teen.
Once the 72 hours was up and Tiffany’s mom was able to officially report her missing, Deiandra said it still took another four days before Tiffany was entered in the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), a national database for law enforcement officers.
“And so that’s a whole week of not even having her in the system,” she told Correspondent Josh Mankiewicz. “That’s a lot of time lost.”
Tiffany’s purse is discovered on highway
Then, just days after Tiffany disappeared, a driver noticed something along a lone stretch of highway where Route 64 intersects with Highway 160, near the reservation community of Sweetwater, Arizona, about an hour west of Shiprock. It was Tiffany’s purse and her library card, along with some clothing that may or may not have belonged to the teen.
No one is sure just how the items ended up there. Deiandra said Tiffany had no known connection to the area. Though some in the area have described it as a party spot for kids, Tiffany doesn’t believe her sister was going there to party.
“I think the part that they’re referring to as the party spot, it’s up the mountain kind of and her stuff wasn’t found up the mountain,” she said. “It was found alongside the highway.”
At the time, Tiffany didn’t have a cell phone or debit card investigators could trace. So, with no other leads, the case soon went cold.
In 2018, the family got a bit of false hope after a police officer stopped a car full of people just outside Shiprock and one of the passengers gave the name “Tiffany Reid.” However, the woman was not Tiffany, and no one is sure why she would have given that name.
After the incident, Tiffany’s family learned that her name had accidentally been “purged” from NCIC system at some point when the center switched to a new database, meaning that police wouldn’t have known Tiffany was a missing person. Her information was later added back into the system, but the family still wonders if the lapsed time might have hindered her case.
“All the cracks that you could think of for her case to fall through, her case fell through those cracks,” Deiandra said.
Police have declined to comment on the case, citing the active investigation.
Becoming an advocate for others
In the years that have followed since Tiffany’s disappearance, their mom has tragically died of cancer. Deiandra struggled to cope with the tragedies, but she eventually went back to school to study criminal justice, finding her way to advocacy.
Today, Deiandra serves on the New Mexico Department of Justice MMIP Task Force, created to draw awareness to missing and murdered indigenous people. She also works for the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women (CSVANW). “We support the 23 tribal nations of New Mexico with policy advocacy work, training, and education,” Tiffany Jiron, executive director of the coalition told Mankiewicz.
Deiandra also hopes to take the bar exam for the Navajo Nation to continue her work in criminal justice and find justice for her sister.
“I want to know what’s going on with my sister’s case,” she said. “So, I’m working my way to actually be part of the system.”
At the time of her disappearance, Tiffany was 5’3” and 115 pounds. She had dark black hair, brown eyes, a scar under her right eye and a scar on one of her arms. Today, she’d be 37 years old.
Anyone with information about her case is urged to call the Navajo Nation Police Department Shiprock District at 505-368-1350.
