I KNEW IT WASN’T MY AUNT: Alisa Goods vanished for 10 days, then her phone suddenly sent a text message containing just three words
I KNEW IT WASN’T MY AUNT: Alisa Goods vanished for 10 days, then her phone suddenly sent a text message containing just three words.
Alisa Goods, 63, had traveled to Las Vegas to visit a friend. Around 12:45 p.m. on August 8, she left the apartment to go to a nearby CVS—and never returned. Ten days have pᴀssed, yet her family still has no idea where she is.
What caused her loved ones even greater alarm was that, days after Alisa’s phone had gone ᴅᴇᴀᴅ, it suddenly “came back to life” and began sending messages asking for money.
Her niece, Alana Calloway, immediately realized something was wrong. The message mentioned someone named Kelly—a person who did not exist within the family—and asked for gas money, even though Alisa hadn’t brought a car on her trip to Las Vegas.
And the second line of the message left everyone terrified.
***************
**Haunting texts sent from missing woman’s phone after she went to CVS & never returned ten days ago as family slam cops**
A 63-year-old New York grandmother who vanished during a routine trip to Las Vegas left her family receiving a series of unsettling text messages from her phone in the days that followed, while relatives publicly criticized what they described as a slow and insufficient response from local police.
Alisa Goods, a grandmother of five from New York, was last seen on the afternoon of 8 August 2026. She had been staying with a longtime friend, Roger John, at his apartment near Maryland Parkway and Tropicana Avenue, an area she had visited multiple times before. Around 12:45 p.m. that day she left the apartment, telling her friend she was heading to a nearby CVS. John later recalled watching her go down the stairs and saying goodbye. He expected her to return after running the errand. She never did.
John said he was not immediately worried. Goods sometimes stayed out for several hours while shopping or handling personal tasks. As the afternoon turned into evening and his calls and texts went unanswered, concern grew. He eventually contacted her family. A missing-person report was filed with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department on 10 August, two days after she was last seen. By then the family’s anxiety had already begun to intensify.
The last known movements
Goods was a regular visitor to Las Vegas and typically stayed with John when she came to town. On this trip she left the apartment to catch a bus toward a CVS, reportedly to purchase iron pills or other items. Family members later said she had been seen at a store near Paradise and Flamingo roads, where she bought supplements and water. After that sighting the trail went cold. No confirmed contact from Goods herself reached the family again.
Relatives began checking hospitals, the coroner’s office and local jails on their own. John distributed missing-person flyers in the neighborhood. The family described Goods as someone who stayed in regular contact and would not simply disappear without explanation. The silence, they said, was completely out of character.
### The messages that raised alarms
Several days after Goods vanished, her cellphone, which the family believed had stopped functioning, suddenly began generating activity. Text messages started arriving that claimed to be from her. The sender reported problems with a bank card and asked for money. The requests quickly escalated. One message inquired about sending funds via Bitcoin on Cash App and offered to provide a wallet address. Another asked for gas money.
Niece Alana Calloway immediately sensed something was wrong. Goods did not drive and had no car with her in Las Vegas, making a request for gas money highly unusual. Calloway tested the sender by referring to a person named “Kelly,” a name that does not exist in the family. Instead of questioning the reference, the sender simply asked for $50. “That was alarming,” Calloway said. “Every time the person texts back, it just felt like my heart was in my stomach because I knew it wasn’t my aunt.”
Goods’ son, Keven Newton, reportedly received similar messages seeking money. At one point a call to the phone was answered, followed by silence or a hang-up, after which communication continued only through text. Family members who heard a voice on one call said it did not sound like Goods. ScreensH๏τs shared by the family showed the sender pressing for funds and claiming the phone needed repair before a voice call could take place.
The messages created a dual layer of distress. On one hand the family hoped the activity meant Goods was still alive and somehow able to communicate. On the other hand the content and the sender’s responses convinced them they were not speaking with her at all. The possibility that someone had obtained her phone and was exploiting the situation for financial gain became a central fear.
### Police classification and family frustration
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police told reporters that investigators believed the messages came from “bad actors” who had gained access to the phone or used spoofing technology to make it appear the texts originated from Goods’ number. A department spokesman said Goods was classified as a missing adult but not as an endangered missing person, a distinction the police noted occurs frequently in Las Vegas. The investigation, they said, remained ongoing.
The family strongly disagreed with the level of priority ᴀssigned to the case. Calloway said it took two days for a formal report to be filed after the family urged action, and further delays occurred before a detective was ᴀssigned. She recalled being told that her aunt “wasn’t a priority.” “How could a person go missing in your city while visiting on vacation and she not be a priority?” she asked. Relatives said they felt they were left to pursue leads themselves while waiting for meaningful updates from investigators.
Family members contacted medical facilities, detention centers and the coroner’s office in an effort to locate Goods. They distributed flyers and turned to social media and local news outlets to raise awareness. The combination of the unanswered disappearance and the subsequent text messages created a period of intense uncertainty and fear.
### The broader context of the search
Goods was described by relatives as fit, full of life and someone who maintained close contact with her family. The sudden break in communication, followed by messages that did not match her known habits or voice, left them convinced that something serious had occurred. John’s account that she left for a short errand and never returned became the last confirmed point of contact.
Police maintained that nothing in their early investigation suggested Goods was in immediate danger, and they continued to treat the matter as a standard missing-adult case while examining the phone activity. The family, however, experienced the situation as an emergency. They questioned how a visitor to the city could vanish after a simple trip to a pharmacy and how messages from her phone requesting cryptocurrency could be dismissed so readily as unrelated scams.
### Later recovery
Subsequent reporting indicated that Goods’ body was located in mid-to-late August. Las Vegas police responded to a call about a deceased woman in a drainage ditch area near Wayne Newton Boulevard and the Terminal 1 parking garage at Harry Reid International Airport. Family members confirmed the identification. Surveillance footage reportedly showed Goods falling down an embankment on 8 August, getting back up and then collapsing in a location not visible from the street. The cause and manner of death were not immediately detailed in public statements.
The discovery brought an end to the active search but left the family confronting both the loss and the sequence of events that had unfolded in the days she was missing. The text messages, the police classification of the case, and the family’s public expressions of frustration formed a significant part of the public record of the disappearance.
A case that combined disappearance and digital distress
The story of Alisa Goods combined a sudden vanishing during an ordinary errand with a subsequent digital trail that caused additional anguish. The messages from her phone created false hope mixed with deep suspicion. The family’s insistence that the texts did not come from Goods, and their criticism of the investigative priority given to the case, highlighted the emotional and practical challenges faced by relatives of missing adults when official ᴀssessments differ from private fears.
Goods left her friend’s apartment on 8 August to go to a CVS and never returned. Days later her phone began sending messages that asked for money and Bitcoin. Police ᴀssessed those messages as likely the work of scammers. The family experienced them as evidence that something was terribly wrong. The eventual recovery of her body near the airport closed the missing-person phase of the case while leaving unanswered questions about the precise circumstances of her final hours and the handling of the investigation in the critical early days.
Relatives continued to seek clarity and to process the loss of a woman they described as deeply loved. The combination of a vanished traveler, unexplained phone activity, and a family’s public plea for greater urgency remains the defining sequence of the case.