MOUNTLAKE TERRACE — Police are investigating the mysterious disappearance of a Mountlake Terrace woman whose car was found near the city’s park-and-ride lot Monday.
“There is a missing person under suspicious circumstances,” Mountlake Terrace assistant police chief Pete Caw said Tuesday morning.
Cheryl D. DeBoer, 54, sent a text message to a friend around 7 a.m. Monday, saying that she would catch a bus instead car-pooling. She has not been seen or heard from since. Her car was parked in the 23400 block of 58th Avenue SW. Police have impounded the vehicle.
Police received a call from the woman’s husband Monday afternoon. He’d received a call from her employer, reporting that she had not shown up.
DeBoer is 5-6 and weighs 130 pounds. She was last seen wearing dark pants and a dark jacket.
She has worked for 15 years at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, where she is a programmer for a Statistical Center for HIV and AIDS Research and Prevention.
Her co-workers fanned out across the park-and-ride lot in Mountlake Terrace on Tuesday morning, talking with bus drivers and passengers who might have seen something.
“It is very unusual,” said April Randhawa, associate director of the statistical research center. “Any time she has been late, she has checked in. Even when she has had a family emergency, she has always checked in. It is completely unlike her.”
Her co-workers are planning to set up a Facebook page to get the word out to a wider audience.
“She is just the sweetest person with the biggest heart,” Randhawa said. “She would help anyone who needs it.”
Randhawa said DeBoer has a close relationship with her husband and family.
“She is always taking about them,” she said.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Heidi Froisland or Detective Sgt. Mike Haynes at (425) 670-8260.
Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446, stevick@heraldnet.com.
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