Alisa Goods, a 63-year-old grandmother of five, traveled to Las Vegas earlier this month to visit a longtime friend. On August 8, she left his apartment to catch a bus to a nearby CVS. She never came back. Over a week has passed since she was last seen, and her family remains caught between hope and dread.
“I am hoping to God for the best, but my heart can’t take what it could be, which is the worst,” her daughter Kristen told CBS News. The Alisa Goods case has taken a darker turn in recent days, with suspicious messages now arriving from her phone number.
Roger John, Goods’ friend of nine years, watched her head downstairs that morning. “Last I saw her, she was going down the stairs. And I said, ‘OK, see you later,'” he told Fox 8 News. He left the house about 15 minutes later, expecting she’d return after shopping. When he came back three hours later, something felt wrong.
“I was like, ‘she should have been home already.’ I didn’t think much of it, because sometimes she’d go out and she’d shop. She stays out,” he said. “I kept texting and calling and texting and calling.”
The family filed a missing persons report on August 10. By then, Goods’ phone appeared disconnected. But days after reporting her missing, they began receiving text messages from her number. The sender claimed to need money, asking for Bitcoin and requesting gas for a car. There was one major problem: Goods didn’t have a car in Las Vegas.
Her niece, Alana Calloway, remembered the moment alarm set in. When she asked the person texting to call back for an emergency, they kept deflecting. “They kept putting it off and saying, ‘Now my card’s not working,'” Calloway told Fox. At one point, the sender mentioned someone named Kelly, a person Calloway said doesn’t exist in their family, according to the New York Post.
Goods’ son, Keven Newton, also received strange messages from the number. Each text notification became another source of dread for the family. The phone, which could have been evidence of contact, now felt like something else entirely.
“Every time the person texts back, it just felt like my heart was in my stomach because I knew it wasn’t my aunt,” Calloway said.
The search has continued in Las Vegas with relatives contacting hospitals, jails, and the coroner’s office. Goods’ daughter traveled to the city to look for answers. Friends distributed missing-person flyers around the area where she disappeared.
“I want to know that she’s OK and that she is alive,” Calloway said. “She has a family that loves her, cares about her. We want her home and want her home safe and alive.”
Police say the investigation remains active. Authorities are asking anyone with information to come forward.
“She is still out there, and we’re looking for her,” Kristen said. “We want her home. We want her back.”
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