Six months after Amy Hillyard disappeared from her Oakland home, investigators are preparing to launch a new search next week for the missing coffee shop owner as more clues emerge.
Amy Hillyard, a co-owner of Farley’s coffee shops in Oakland and San Francisco, was last seen on March 25 around 2 p.m. near the 500 block of Radnor Road. Officials believe Hillyard, 52, left her house alone, without her phone and other belongings, on the day she disappeared.
Steve Fischer, a private investigator hired by the Hillyard family, told SFGATE that over the past two days, investigators conducted a “deep forensics dive” of Amy’s devices and apps. Investigators found that the day before Amy disappeared, Chrome browser data shows that she spent about 30 minutes looking at eight different hiking routes spanning from the Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park area in Oakland to Berkeley, Fischer said.
Investigators were previously only aware of three routes, which have been searched, leaving five more to search, according to Fischer. A small team will search those hiking routes beginning Sunday, he said. The routes are all about 5 miles from Amy’s home, and she had previously hiked all but one of them, according to Fischer.
“These are areas that were quite frankly not on our radar,” Fischer said. “… Some of them are long trails. Some of these go up to like six and a half to seven miles.”
Fischer said the discovery “makes sense” because Amy is a very “avid hiker.” Chris Hillyard, Amy’s husband and the co-owner of Farley’s, also previously told the San Francisco Chronicle that his wife was recovering from depression and anxiety when she disappeared. Fischer said some of Amy’s journal entries said hiking was one way she managed her anxiety.
FILE: Co-owners Chris and Amy Hillyard stand in the doorway at Farley’s in San Francisco on Oct. 28, 2021. Amy Hillyard went missing earlier this year. (Douglas Zimmerman/SFGATE)
According to Bring Amy Home, a website created by the Hillyard family, search teams and loved ones have visited dozens of hiking trails and looked through hours of surveillance footage over the past several months but have yet to find answers.
Fischer said Amy’s disappearance is among the most perplexing cases he has worked on, largely because she hasn’t appeared on any video footage since she went missing. The only confirmed footage of Amy shows her leaving her home.
Officials have been able to look through video from locations with long-term security camera footage, such as banks and temples, but no one has been able to spot her, he added. Investigators have also determined that video of a person previously believed to be Amy at Diamond Canyon Park was not her, Fischer said.
“This is a woman who walked away from a very populated area in Oakland and most likely going towards the hiking trails. Even as investigator, it’s so hard for me to wrap my head around this one,” he said. “… This is not a case where she started at a trailhead in the wilderness, this is where she had to traverse through really populated area.”
While investigators believe that one of the more likely scenarios is that Amy disappeared while hiking, there is no guarantee she took any of the eight routes she searched online the day before, Fischer said.
“I think we will find that she was walking to clear her head and is out in the wilderness somewhere,” he said. “I really hope that it’s a case where she decided to walk away from her life and start some new one. But at six [months], it’s so hard for somebody not to leave a digital footprint, whether they want to or not.”
Still, Fischer said it’s not known where Amy went after leaving her home on March 25, and he asked anyone with information to come forward.
“Other than that, we can’t say any of these theories are wrong because we truly just don’t know what happened here,” Fischer said.
On Friday, her husband posted a video statement, saying the family and investigators will continue looking for his wife “by any means available.” He said teams even recently used drones to survey some of Amy’s favorite hiking spots.
“We all keep trying and every day we wake up with a glimmer of hope that today will the day that brings some piece of information that offers an answer to Amy’s whereabouts,” Chris said.
The family is offering $25,000 for anyone with information that leads to her safe return. She is 120 pounds and 5 feet, 4 inches tall with blonde hair and hazel eyes. She was last seen wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, light jeans and white sneakers.
Amy is considered at-risk because of a medical condition, and anyone with information is urged to call the Oakland Police Department’s missing person unit at 510-238-3641.
(The Chronicle and SFGATE are both owned by Hearst but have separate newsrooms.)
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This article originally published at Officials return to search for coffee shop owner Amy Hillyard after new details emerge.
