On the morning of Friday, July 23, 2010, twenty-two-year-old Mayra Lisette Contreras arrived at a private residential home in the 13100 block of Mira Mar Drive in Sylmar, California. Contreras, a young Hispanic woman living in neighboring Pacoima, was a mother of two young children and married to Gerardo Olvera. Drawn by promotional flyers circulating through the San Fernando Valley advertising low-cost cosmetic procedures and revolutionary treatments, she had arranged to undergo silicone injections to enlarge her buttocks. Unbeknownst to the public, the practitioners operating out of the quiet residential neighborhood were running an underground cosmetic surgery operation without valid medical licensing.
Within hours of receiving the injections, Contreras began experiencing severe physical distress. Her condition rapidly deteriorated as she suffered acute respiratory complications, a common and catastrophic consequence when injected liquid silicone migrates into the bloodstream and travels to the lungs. Her family rushed her to a nearby hospital for emergency care as medical personnel attempted to stabilize her failing respiratory system. Despite their intervention, the damage proved fatal. Contreras died the following day, Saturday, July 24, 2010.
Homicide investigators from the Los Angeles Police Department's Mission Division took charge of the investigation into the fatal procedure. Authorities immediately identified two sisters, fifty-three-year-old Guadalupe Viveros and fifty-year-old Alejandra Viveros, as the operators of the illicit business. Investigators revealed that the sisters had operated out of the Mira Mar Drive residence, where Alejandra recruited clientele and Guadalupe administered the injections, claiming she was a licensed physician in Mexico. Just a month earlier, on June 21, 2010, LAPD Foothill Division detectives had arrested both sisters for practicing medicine without a license after previous patients suffered severe complications, infections, and hardening of unidentified fillers.
Following that June arrest, both sisters had posted twenty thousand dollars bail and were released from custody. Detectives learned that Contreras had received treatments from the sisters prior to their arrest and had returned on the morning of July 23 for an additional session. Both sisters were scheduled to appear in court on Monday, July 26, for arraignment on the unlicensed medical practice charges. However, after learning of Contreras's death, neither sister appeared for the hearing. Detectives determined that the pair jumped bail and fled, with authorities suspecting they crossed the border into Mexico to avoid prosecution.
The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner-Coroner examined Contreras to determine the precise physiological mechanism of death pending toxicology and tissue testing, and the case was logged as a homicide. Mission Division detectives held a press conference urging other victims to come forward and seeking tips to locate the fugitive sisters. More than a decade after the fatal procedure, Guadalupe and Alejandra Viveros remain unaccounted for, and no one has ever stood trial for the unlicensed operation that took the life of Mayra Lisette Contreras.
