“We never expected this to happen,” Yolanda Del Mundo told Dateline. “We thought it was just any ordinary trip that she’s about to go — and then something bad happened.”
In September 2019, Yolanda’s younger sister Paula Del Mundo vanished while en route to a 10-day solo vacation in Cozumel, Mexico.
Her family is still reeling from her disappearance six years later, and they’re hoping you might be able to help.
In 2019, 59-year-old Paula Del Mundo worked as a nursing assistant at the VA Hospital in Tampa, Florida. Her younger sister, Lolita Gaviola, also worked there. “Paula is known for her sense of humor and ability to make people laugh. She is very generous and will not have second thoughts of helping someone in need. She is loving and caring,” Lolita said. “She’s very organized, and she makes sure her apartment is always tidy. She’s very good at saving money. She always packs her lunch and brings lunch for me when she knows I am working. She loves to save and treats herself for vacations, too.”
“She is really a dedicated one. Very systematic, a hard-working — call it a workaholic. She is like that,” sister Yolanda Del Mundo told Dateline. “That’s the reason why she received several recognitions and awards.”
The sisters grew up in the Philippines. Paula is the 10th of 12 children in the family, and is transgender. Yolanda told Dateline Paula had known from a young age that she was different from her brothers. “She was always with the girls, playing with us when she was young. So eventually, she really said, ‘I cannot be like my brothers. I am this. I hope you can all accept me,’” Yolanda remembered. “We really embrace her gender now as a transgender sister.”
In the ‘80s, older sister Leonor got married to a U.S. citizen and was the first to move to the United States. She then worked to petition for her family to come over, as well. “My siblings waited over 20 to 23 years,” Leonor Sangco told Dateline. “Paula was the first one I petitioned, because she asked me that as soon as I get my citizenship that she will be the first one. So I said, ‘I promise you that I will do it.’” And she did. Paula came to the U.S. in the early 2000s and officially became a U.S. citizen in 2015.
On September 13, 2019 — the night before Paula was heading out on her vacation — she was at work. She had recently had rotator cuff surgery and was improving, but still wasn’t able to work fully. “There are things that she can’t do, like lifting,” Lolita said. Leonor also thought Paula was frustrated because she couldn’t work overtime with the injury. “And that’s very concerning for her because she likes to work. She likes to work overtime to save money and to pay the bills,” she said.
Lolita talked to their co-workers after Paula vanished and asked them what kind of spirits Paula had been in that night before her vacation. “Paula was excited,” Lolita said they reported.
In hindsight, the sisters told Dateline, some of Paula’s behavior prior to her trip had been a little out of the ordinary. “We noticed that Paula became distant, because we have a group chat here in the States and then Paula is kind of not joining the group and have excuses, ‘I’m tired. I have to work tomorrow.’ So she’s kind of distant,” Leonor said.
She also said Paula usually shared the outfits she planned on wearing each day of vacation with them. “On her previous trips, before she goes to the trip, she will try different clothes to wear. And show us, ‘Oh, this is my — on day one I will wear this, on day two I will wear this,’” Leonor said. “But this last trip, nothing.”
Leonor got the feeling Paula was having second thoughts about the trip, so the sisters made a point of encouraging her. “Because she already paid for the trip accommodation, the flights, and everything, and it’s her time to relax, to enjoy,” she said. “But we did not know that it’s gonna end up like this.”
Paula had been planning the solo trip to Cozumel for nearly a year. She hadn’t shared her flight details with her sisters, and had taken a rideshare to the airport instead of getting a ride from Lolita, so they didn’t know what she was wearing that day. “We don’t know the hotel where she will be staying. We have no idea,” Leonor said.
What they did know was that Paula arrived at the airport in Dallas on the morning of Saturday, September 14. And that she never boarded her connecting flight to Cozumel.
The DFW Airport Police Department is handling Paula’s case. Dateline contacted the department for an interview about Paula’s disappearance, but has not heard back. The records of Paula’s case were provided at Dateline’s request, however.
The incident report confirmed that “on the morning of 9/14/2019, [Paula] took an Uber to Tampa International Airport (TPA) and boarded AA1369 to DFW. Upon arrival to DFW [Paula] should have taken AA1256 to Cozumel Mexico (CZM).” But Paula failed to board the flight and “began calling her sisters stating she wanted to return home to Tampa.” The report stated that “on the day of disappearance, the family received text communications they feel are ‘incoherent.’”
“She called me first. ‘I’m here at the airport. It’s a huge airport. I think I’m lost,’ she told me,” Leonor said. “And I said, ‘You can ask people for your connecting flight, for your boarding gate.’ And she said, ‘OK, I’ll do that.’”
Later, Leonor says she started receiving concerning texts from her sister. “‘I think they set me up. I did not do anything wrong. And I even prayed to God that, God is my witness, I did not do anything wrong,’” Leonor said, quoting the texts from Paula.
Leonor said Paula then mentioned the names of several people she knew in Florida. “And then she said that she’s lonely,” Leonor remembered. “And she said, ‘How many days I’ve not been eating. I’ve been thinking a lot lately.’ And I said, ‘What is this?’ So it’s very concerning.”
Something was very clearly wrong. “So I called my sister, Lolita. I said, ‘Lolita, I received a text message from Paula,’” Leonor said.
Lolita remembers telling Leonor that she had also been in contact with Paula that day. She says she missed a call from her at 3:30 p.m. “And then — 4:30 p.m., I texted Paula and told her, ‘Sorry I missed your call.’ And then 6:53 p.m., Paula texted me, written in Tagalog language, and said, ‘My battery is dead — about to die, and I want to go back to Florida.’”
Finally, around 7 p.m., Lolita spoke with Paula on the phone. “I asked her, ‘Why are you changing your plan?’ And she said, ‘I will tell you once I come back home.’”
Lolita told Leonor and Yolanda what Paula had said on the phone. “And then we panicked,” Leonor said.
“We all agreed — something is not right,” Lolita said. She called the DFW Airport Police that night, and says they asked for Paula’s flight information and description of her clothes — which she did not have. But Lolita kept calling. She says eventually someone from the department told her that she needed to get that information, but said she could file a missing person report in the meantime.
Lolita says she was able to go over to Paula’s apartment complex on Monday, September 16, and gain access to her unit. “She was able to get into the — to the apartment and was able to find out the details,” of Paula’s trip, Yolanda said. Armed with that information, the sisters soon learned that Paula never made it to Mexico. “We checked the hotel. We checked the airlines — American Airlines — and she did not fly. She was not there,” Yolanda said.
According to the DFW Airport Police incident report, authorities scoured security video and found Paula “as she exits the plane in DFW.” The video shows her wearing “a white blouse with purple pants and white shoes. She also has a shoulder bag and is towing a yellow and gray roll-aboard suitcase.”
Yolanda and Lolita arrived in Texas on September 20 and spoke with detectives. “We stayed in Fort Worth for five days,” Yolanda said. “They were explaining to us how it went, so there was a sort of reenactment.” They say officials explained they’d been able to track Paula’s movements through the airport.
At one point, the family says, Paula was right by the public safety office. “She even rested in front of the public safety office where the police office is located. But if she really wanted help, she could have entered the premises and asked help,” Yolanda said. “But she never did.”
“The detectives explained to us that the last stop that Paula went was a ladies’ room before she went out of the airport. So it was around 10 o’clock in the evening,” Yolanda said. She believes Paula was hungry, confused, and afraid.
According to the incident report, detectives spent many hours reviewing security footage. Through that, they were able to confirm that, at some point, Paula no longer had her roller bag, just her shoulder bag. They also searched along the service road and near the warehouses. “Detectives walked this area and found no trace of bag or other information,” the incident report states. Officials “checked all Airport lost and found locations including AA unclaimed baggage resolution warehouse for yellow/gray bag with no results.” They also checked for calls of unattended bags and suspicious persons from the 14th and 15th, but did not find anything of note.
Investigators eventually uncovered video of Paula at 2:43 a.m. on the 15th in the warehouse area of the airport. Authorities requested additional video from the companies that own those warehouses. The companies “provided several hours of video which shows [Paula] sitting on the curb” in front of one of the warehouses, the incident report states. “On 9/15/2019 at approximately 0352 hours, she stands and walks toward the street entrance and cannot be traced any further. This is the last video we have of [Paula].”
Yolanda says the footage from the warehouse area was not very clear. “They cannot see the movement — they cannot detect whether Paula went to the right side or Paula went to the left side,” Yolanda said. “They said if Paula went to the left side, it’s the dead end where bushes are located, where wild hogs are there.”
And to the right, the road. “If Paula went to the other side, it’s the — where the passersby, motorists went through,” Yolanda said. At that point any number of things could have happened. “We do not know,” Yolanda said. “So it’s still a mystery to us.”
According to the incident report, police issued a BOLO and searched the terminals, cab stands, and rideshares. They confirmed Paula hadn’t boarded another flight, rented a car, or taken a bus. Calls to her phone went unanswered, and checks of her hotels, hospitals, and finances all came back with no results.
“There was no trace. No calls — no calls made, and no money spent,” Yolanda said. Paula’s phone was dead. “The last call that Paula did to Lolita was, ‘My phone is about to die.’”
On October 3, 2019, the Search One Rescue Team was contacted to perform a K9 search of the area where Paula was last seen. “On this day the search was performed with negative results,” the DFW Airport Police incident report states. Later in October and early November, the DFW Airport Drone Team conducted two drone searches. “The team searched 967 acres and 484 acres respectively, flying at an altitude of between 100- 200 feet. The areas searched were south of the water treatment plant and north of Hwy 183 on the first date, and north of the water treatment plant and south of Construction Road on the second date. The searches yielded negative results.”
In mid-November 2019, authorities checked the hospitals again, but there was still no sign of Paula. They stated in the incident report that they will “continue to check hospitals every few months.”
By August of 2020, with little to no change in the case, the Lewisville Fire Department Dive and Rescue Team was contacted to search Trigg Lake, which is on the airport grounds. “An advanced Sonar Search of the south end of the Lake was performed,” the incident report states. They did not find anything of note, but returned to check again in September 2020, as the first anniversary of Paula’s disappearance neared.
“The Lewisville Fire Department Dive Team returned to Trigg Lake and completed three additional dives with negative results.”
“We are at a loss of what to do,” Yolanda said. “Our only wish is to be able to find out where Paula could have been.”
Over the past six years, the family has been pushing for answers. They created a Facebook page to share updates and photos of Paula. They say that at some point, authorities told them they had found something they wanted to test. “There’s a fabric that they found and [the authorities] wanted to do a DNA test on the fabric,” Lolita said. “He’s asking if we have some personal items that we can give to them and — which I did. Other than that, I follow up two months ago. He said, ‘There’s only one state lab that handles all this. But as soon as I have the result, we will let you know.’”
“Six years is a long time to wait, but we are still hoping — hoping for something to happen,” Yolanda said. “There are many questions at the back of our mind, but we keep on praying, hoping for the best to come — that one day she will be found. But we will never stop. We want closure.”
“I like to believe that there’s hope,” Leonor said. “So many missing persons unsolved, many years, still no closure. I don’t want that to happen to our sister Paula. So I’m still hoping, hoping that someday a miracle will happen, that she will be found.”
“I sincerely believe that something — something really happened to her. She did not purposely disappear,” Lolita said. “We would ask the public to please give us some information, any kind of information out there, if they knew something. We would really appreciate it.”
Paula is 5’6” and 120 lbs. She has brown hair, brown eyes, and a flower tattoo on her right forearm. She would be 65 years old today.
If you have any information regarding Paula’s disappearance, please contact the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport Department of Public Safety at 972-973-3434.
If you have a story to share with Dateline, please submit it here.
