The lack of clues about what happened to an outgoing young bicyclist is “definitely troubling,” a sheriff’s officer said in an update about the search for Tiffany Slaton.
Tiffany Slaton, reported missing April 2025 in Fresno County, Calif. (Image from video / Fresno County Sheriff’s Office)
A news conference Tuesday, May 13, fielded questions about Slaton, a 27-year-old woman on a solo bicycle camping trip who was last seen almost three weeks ago in the southern Sierra Nevada.
It also gave the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office another chance to solicit video from the public that may shed light on the case.
Slaton had been bicycling through California after completing a stint as a traveling dialysis technician in Oregon, said her parents, who live in Georgia. They said she was in touch with them daily until April 21; the last reported sighting of her was April 24 near Shaver Lake, in the Sierra National Forest above Fresno.
In Tuesday’s conference, sheriff’s public information officer Tony Botti said all possible explanations for her disappearance are still on the table: accident, foul play, voluntarily going missing.
He said the search team is asking for any images or video taken on or around April 24 in the Shaver Lake area. “Anything that can further our timeline is a huge plus,” he said.
On Monday, the sheriff’s office released video of Slaton recorded April 8 in Santa Cruz County, with the intent of prompting information from others who may have seen her in the following weeks. Botti said the video was given to them by a person who met Slaton when she was stopped at a farm in the Santa Cruz area and later saw her on the road.
The released clip shows Slaton on her electric bicycle, towing a small two-wheeled trailer. Though it has no sound, it presents Slaton as Botti described her, outgoing and upbeat.
“She knows how to get around in strange areas, where she doesn’t know anybody — make friends, live off the land, be conversational,” Botti said. ” … It seems like when times are tough she’s going to reach out and make the best of a bad situation and be able to survive. So that does raise a flag to us: How can somebody so outgoing and who has traveled so much of the world suddenly just vanish? … It’s definitely troubling.”
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Botti said an intensive five-day search that ended Saturday, May 10, covered “most of the places she would possibly be” and turned up nothing as much as a snack wrapper or orange peel. The search continues in a scaled-down mode.
Though the sheriff’s team has not ruled out foul play, Botti said there is no “person of interest” in her disappearance.
Slaton’s itinerary had her continuing east from Shaver Lake to Mono Hot Springs, but that road is closed by snow.
Slaton is described as 5-foot-10 and 125 pounds; she had been wearing her hair in braids. Besides the bike and trailer, she had a gray and green tent, which has not been found.