Mariela Adela Lopez Escalante, an 18-year-old Hispanic female also known by the nickname Masiela, was reported missing from the Mt. Lebanon area of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, after her last documented contact on July 18, 2020. NamUs lists her case as MP72067 and records her missing location as Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, while public missing-child listings from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and other case summaries place the last-seen reporting around July 19, 2020, in the Pittsburgh/Mt. Lebanon area. Because public sources differ by one day, the most careful understanding is that Mariela was last known to be in contact or seen during that July 18–19, 2020 window, with NamUs documenting July 18 as the date of last contact.
At the time she disappeared, Mariela was described as a young woman with black hair and brown eyes, standing about 4 feet 9 inches tall and weighing roughly 95 to 100 pounds. She had identifying tattoos that could help someone recognize her: a moon and stars on the back of her neck, two hearts on her left wrist, and a butterfly on her lower back. The Charley Project also notes that her ears were pierced, and NamUs records her race and ethnicity as Hispanic/Latino. These details matter because, in a case with few public circumstances, physical identifiers become an important part of how the public may still be able to help connect a memory, a sighting, or a piece of information to the right person.
Local reporting at the time said Mariela was missing from a foster care home in Mt. Lebanon. According to CBS Pittsburgh and WPXI, she had come to the United States at age 17, had been placed in foster care, and was considered a ward of the state when police began asking the public for help finding her. Those reports framed the case as an urgent search for a missing 18-year-old woman and directed anyone with information to contact authorities immediately. The public record does not provide many details about what happened immediately before she vanished, which leaves the story marked by uncertainty rather than a clear sequence of known events.
The available case information says Mariela has not been heard from since she disappeared and has not made contact with anyone. NamUs states that her phone had been off since her disappearance, a detail that deepened concern because it cut off one of the most direct ways she might have reached friends, family, caregivers, or authorities. The Charley Project similarly reports that she was last seen in the Pittsburgh area and has never been heard from again, while noting that few details are available in her case. The Mount Lebanon Police Department is listed as the investigating agency, and NCMEC continues to associate the case with poster number 1397372.
In the years since Mariela Lopez Escalante disappeared, the public-facing information has remained painfully limited: a young woman, only 18, living in foster care after arriving in the United States as a teenager, was last known to be in the Mt. Lebanon/Pittsburgh area in mid-July 2020 and then seemingly fell silent. The exact public timeline is not perfectly consistent, with NamUs listing July 18, 2020, and several other sources listing July 19, 2020, but the core facts are consistent across sources: Mariela was a female Hispanic teenager, also known as Masiela, missing from the Pittsburgh-area community of Mt. Lebanon, and she has not been publicly reported as recovered in the sources reviewed. The overview of the case is one of a vulnerable young person’s unexplained disappearance, a small number of identifying details, an inactive phone, and an investigation still dependent on anyone who may know what happened to Mariela during that July 2020 weekend.
Last Seen: Jul 18, 2020
