Tot Harriman, born Tran Thi Tot in Vietnam in February 1944, was a 57-year-old Vietnamese-American woman who vanished on July 12, 2001, while traveling from League City, Texas, to Corpus Christi. She had planned to relocate to Texas to be closer to her children and grandchildren. On the morning of her disappearance, she left her son's home in League City at 5 a.m., driving her metallic rose 1995 Lincoln Continental with a custom Florida license plate reading "TOTSY." She was dressed in a shirt, shorts, and sandals, and was wearing gold rings and bracelets. Her planned route was well-documented, and she had informed her family of her itinerary, including scheduled stops to look at potential properties.
Despite extensive searches, neither Tot nor her vehicle were ever found. Numerous sightings of her car were reported, but they always came one or two days late. Her disappearance remains an unsolved mystery, with no confirmed suspects or arrests. Some theories suggest she may have been robbed and killed, given that she was wearing valuable jewelry and traveling alone. However, no concrete evidence has surfaced to support this theory. Her family hired private investigators and volunteers combed the area along Texas Route 35, but no trace of her was discovered.
Tot Harriman had lived a remarkable life before her disappearance. She had worked as a maid and seamstress in Vietnam to support her family before meeting her husband, Clinton H. Harriman, an American merchant marine, in 1968. She later moved to Maine and became a translator for Vietnamese refugees at hospitals. At the time of her disappearance, she was financially stable and looking to invest in real estate. Her sudden vanishing remains one of Texas' enduring mysteries, leaving her family without answers and investigators without leads.
