On a warm day in 2022, Hawaii native Hannah Kobayashi jumped into the Subaru Baja of her friend Allisa Peterson for an hourlong journey on Maui – from her home community of Haiku to a friend’s farm in Nahiku.
The farm had an excess of flowers, and there the friends picked orchids and other colorful plants for their new floral design business, Forage Fairies. For a client, they planned to decorate a concert stage with flowers.
Peterson remembers looking at Hannah – dressed in a tan tank top and shorts – and noticing how happy she looked while picking orchids.
“Us co-creating flower arrangements was really the most beautiful thing,” Peterson told CNN. Hannah was good at it “just by, like, knowing flowers and creativity and knowing the right people and sourcing it properly.”
Arranging flowers was just one of the many creative and entrepreneurial projects Hannah pursued before the 30-year-old went missing this month in a mystery that has garnered national headlines.
On November 8, she took a flight from Maui to Los Angeles International Airport, where she was to take a connecting flight to New York the same day but did not board, her sister Sydni Kobayashi said.
What came next, Hannah’s family says, were three days of sometimes alarming hints of activity in Los Angeles before the trail ran cold: Sightings at a shopping center; Venmo payments to people her family doesn’t know; worrying texts to a friend about not feeling safe; and a video showing her with an unknown person at a city train station.
The search itself would merge with tragedy involving another family member: Her father, who traveled to Los Angeles to help look for her, was found dead Sunday near the airport, having taken his own life, the family and authorities say. The father, according to Hannah’s aunt Larie Pidgeon, “died of a broken heart.”
Hannah’s relatives, now grieving her father, say they fear she may have been abducted and continue pressing the public for information about her whereabouts. During the search, several who know her have talked publicly about who she is, and her near- and long-term aspirations.
Since she graduated high school, Hannah’s worked various gigs while pursuing creative passions, Pidgeon and Peterson say. Among other things, she also was an aspiring photographer, Pidgeon says – something that was somewhat tied to the trip she was taking.
Although Hannah was to visit another aunt in upstate New York, she also intended to take pictures at a DJ’s mid-November show in Brooklyn, according to her family.
She had sent a message to the DJ, offering to give him photos of the show in exchange for a pass to the event. The artist agreed and also offered free merchandise, one of the musician’s managers told CNN.
“She’s such a creative, artistic soul. I think it’s just embedded in her,” Peterson said.
But to the family’s knowledge and despair, Hannah did not arrive in New York.
Her disappearance
For her November 8 trip, Hannah had the same itinerary as an ex-boyfriend. The pair decided to keep their flights since they could not get a refund but would be going their separate ways once they landed in New York, Sydni Kobayashi previously told CNN. The ex-boyfriend, unlike Hannah, boarded a connecting flight from Los Angeles to New York.
CNN obtained a photo that appears to show Hannah getting off her flight at the Los Angeles airport. It is not clear why she did not take her connecting flight.
On November 9, Hannah was spotted at a bookstore at The Grove shopping center in Los Angeles, her sister said, and it is unclear why she was there. She then sent a Venmo payment to two people whose names the family does not recognize, her sister said.
On November 10, a video was posted on YouTube showing Hannah at a Nike store event – held at the same shopping center – at which the public could try out the new LeBron XXII shoes. A photo of the event was also posted on her Instagram account, her sister said.
On November 11 – the last day loved ones heard from her – her mother texted her, asking whether she made it to New York. Hannah responded no, her sister said. She also sent messages to a friend saying she did not feel safe, and someone was trying to steal her identity and money, according to screenshots her sister sent to CNN.
“Deep Hackers wiped my identity, stole all of my funds, & have had me on a mind f**k since Friday,” one message to a friend said.
Another message said, “I got tricked pretty much into giving away all my funds,” followed by one saying, “For someone I thought I loved.”
Hannah was also seen in November 11 surveillance video with an unknown person around a downtown Los Angeles Metro train station, her family said.
On November 15, Los Angeles police distributed a poster about the disappearance, saying Hannah was last seen at the airport. It said she has freckles on her face and a tattoo on her forearm.
