Behind Monterey Park girl's disappearance: A father and mother at war

A sign posted in Monterey Park seeks information on the whereabouts of a missing girl.

By Summer LinStaff Writer

Aug. 7, 2024 Updated 9:08 PM PT

It was a case that sparked headlines: A teenage girl from Monterey Park had gone missing. Friends and family pleaded with the public for help, desperately searching for clues across the San Gabriel Valley.

Then, a seemingly happy ending: She was found outside the gates of KABC-TV Channel 7, apparently unharmed and eager to tell her story.

But the case has only gotten more bizarre in the last two weeks.

For the record:

7:28 a.m. Sept. 3, 2024This article misspells the first name of Jeffery Chao as Jeffrey.

The girl’s father, Jeffrey Chao, was arrested July 26, accused by authorities of concocting the missing-person story and hiding the girl from his estranged wife.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office then charged Chao with child stealing/concealment and falsifying a police report. He has since been released on $500,000 bond. He denies any wrongdoing.

The very public disappearance of the 15-year-old has since exposed a private family battle that pitted her mother against her father.

On the afternoon of July 16, the teen left her father’s home on North Ynez Avenue in Monterey Park. Family members said she was riding a blue mountain bike to her aunt’s house in San Gabriel, about 20 minutes away. When she didn’t arrive, her dad reported her missing.

Neighbors were quick to organize searches. Fliers were put up in nearby cities. Information was shared frantically on social media.

The Monterey Park Police Department launched a missing persons investigation. Annie Chao, the girl’s mother, tearfully told KABC-TV that a McDonald’s employee stayed out until 1 a.m. one night to help look for her daughter.

“The community has really come together to help me look for my little girl,” she said.

Then, on July 23, the teen showed up at KABC’s office in Glendale.

A Glendale resident who identified herself only as Rachelle said she had recognized the girl from fliers and alerted a security guard. Rachelle said the girl told her that she was at KABC to tell her side of the story.

There was no sign of foul play and the girl had left home “on her own accord,” Jose Romero, an attorney retained by Jeffrey Chao, said at a news conference the day she was found.

The drama marked the latest in a string of legal troubles involving the girl’s parents that began when Annie Chao filed for divorce on April 5, 2023.

Shortly after the divorce filing, Annie Chao and her father, Arthur Tang, were arrested on suspicion of felony abuse, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department records.

The same day, Monterey Park police issued an emergency protective order to keep Annie Chao and her father away from her daughter.

The protective order was issued after the child told a nurse practitioner that her mother and grandfather were abusing her.

On May 1, 2023, Jeffrey Chao was granted a temporary domestic violence restraining order against his wife after alleging she had struck him and, at one point, stabbed him with scissors. He also alleged in his request for a restraining order that she had emotionally and physically abused their daughter.

The girl was previously identified by news outlets, but The Times is no longer naming her because of the abuse allegations.

The case against the mother and grandfather did not materialize. The L.A. County district attorney’s office declined to file charges, citing insufficient evidence, according to a charge evaluation sheet reviewed by The Times.

But problems with the Chaos persisted.

The girl went to live with her father, while her mother sought custody.

Annie Chao said in a statement that she strongly denied the abuse allegations and accused her husband of being “extremely controlling” by trying to “isolate both [my daughter] and me.”

“Before our separation, I had a close, loving relationship with [her],” Chao said in the statement.

But Chao had sought mental health treatment for the girl.

On June 21, the Los Angeles County Superior Court ordered Jeffrey Chao to facilitate his daughter’s admission the following month to La Ventana Mental Health and Addiction Treatment Center in Thousand Oaks. Annie Chao was also given sole legal custody over the girl.

According to a Monterey Park Police Department call for service, officers arrived with Annie Chao at Jeffrey Chao’s home on July 15, but neither he nor his daughter would open the screen door. Instead of letting the teen go outside so her mother could drive her to La Ventana, Jeffrey Chao was given the option of driving his daughter to the center himself, according to a police report. But both he and the girl refused — in violation of the court order, police wrote in their report.

The following day, when Annie Chao was supposed to take custody of her daughter, the girl vanished.

Her attorney, Gregory Almas, has accused Jeffrey Chao of not cooperating with the investigation when his daughter was missing, echoing allegations from the charging documents against Chao.

“Mr. Chao is not a ‘hero’ as some on social media have described him,” Almas said in a statement.

The charges against Chao have caused ire among some, with some people calling for the girl to be able to share her side of the story and be returned to her father.

Romero said she has been in the care of the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services since she was found, although the agency refused to confirm that information.

Prosecutor Norma Serna said during Chao’s arraignment that when the girl spoke to police, she told them she’d been staying at a location that was found by her father and a family friend.

She was hiding out “until things got better,” Serna said. “These are actually [her] words to the police.”

Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.