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Hannah Kobayashi found safe weeks after being reported missing in Los Angeles, family’s attorney says
Hannah Kobayashi, the Hawaii woman whose disappearance in Los Angeles launched a desperate search by family and friends, has been found safe about a month after being reported missing, her family’s attorney said Wednesday.
The 30-year-old Maui woman has been described by the Los Angeles Police Department as voluntarily missing. According to police, she was seen on surveillance video crossing the U.S. border into Mexico and did not appear to be the victim of foul play. LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell made the announcement on Dec. 2, about three weeks after family members say they last heard from her.
Her phone last pinged at Los Angeles International Airport on Nov. 11, when she missed an LAX flight to New York and was later seen boarding the Metro in LA, according to her family. Several relatives flew in from states such as Hawaii and New York, handing out fliers and speaking with local news outlets in Los Angeles as they searched the city for Kobayashi.
Larie Pidgeon
The weekend after Thanksgiving, a little less than three weeks after she was reported missing, her father, Ryan Kobayashi, was found dead near LAX in what police have described as an apparent suicide. He had flown in to join the search for her.
On Wednesday, her family released a statement through their attorneys announcing she had been found.
“We are incredibly relieved and grateful that Hannah has been found safe,” reads the statement released by the LA-based Law Office of Sara Azari, on behalf of her family. “This past month has been an unimaginable ordeal for our family, and we kindly ask for privacy as we take the time to heal and process everything we have been through.”
“We want to express our heartfelt thanks to everyone who supported us during this difficult time. Your kindness and concern have meant the world to us,” the statement continues.
When family members couldn’t reach her last month, they said Kobayashi would have indicated if she was planning to go off the grid voluntarily. Her aunt, Larie Pidgeon, said she had sent a series of cryptic texts just before she stopping communicating with her family.
“Things started to get nefarious and scary on Monday when it went from ‘I can’t see you. I’m so excited,’ to texts about people stealing her identity,” Pidgeon said last month. “That she was scared. That she felt unsafe. That people were going to steal her funds — and that doesn’t make sense. Using pet names she’s never used before.”
Pidgeon said the family later learned she did leave LAX on Nov. 11 and was seen boarding the LA Metro with someone.
“She was not alone. She was with an unidentified person. That causes us extreme alarm because that correlates with the timeline of her going missing,” Pidgeon said.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inaugural fund, a spokesperson for the social media giant confirmed to CBS News Wednesday night.
The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The move comes two weeks after Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg traveled to Florida and dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
At the time, Trump adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News that Zuckerberg had “made clear that he wants to support the national renewal of America under Trump’s leadership.”
Trump was removed from Facebook following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol when it determined that his posts had potentially encouraged the violence that occurred that day.
The company restored his account in early 2023, but with certain “guardrails.” In July, those restrictions were lifted by Meta.
Trump has a combined 65 million followers on Facebook and Instagram.
In August, Zuckerberg submitted a letter to Congress claiming that the Biden administration in 2021 “repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire.” He called “the government pressure wrong” and said he would push back against any similar efforts in the future.
Silicon Valley has been uneasy about the kind of the treatment it may get from a second Trump administration, and the donation may signal an attempt by Zuckerberg to thaw those tensions.
Trump’s choice of Brendan Carr, a prominent critic of big tech, to lead the Federal Communications Commission has potentially heightened those concerns.
CBS News has reached out to the Trump transition team for comment on the donation.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he has tapped Kari Lake as director of the government-funded Voice of America, the nation’s largest international broadcaster.
The move comes after the 55-year-old Lake lost her Arizona Senate bid to Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in November.
“She will be appointed by, and work closely with, our next head of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, who I will announce soon,” Trump said in a post to his Truth Social platform.
Lake, a former longtime TV news anchor in Phoenix, is a fierce Trump loyalist who also lost her campaign for Arizona governor in 2022. During her campaigns, she often echoed Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.
Anita Pouchard Serra/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Voice of America, which is part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, broadcasts news internationally in 49 languages on radio, television and online to an audience of an estimated 354 million people per week, according to its website.
It has about 2,000 employees and an annual budget of approximately $260 million.
Lake’s appointment must still be confirmed by the Senate.
During Trump’s first term in 2020, USAGM’s editorial independence came into question after Trump named Michael Pack — a conservative filmmaker and close ally of one-time Trump adviser Steve Bannon — its CEO.
Pack subsequently made the decision not to renew the visas of 10 VOA journalists and dozens of others who work at networks under USAGM, increasing concerns by members of Congress and the international community alike over the potential of diminished editorial independence of the VOA news outlet.
John Lippman is currently the acting director of VOA, a post he’s held since October 2023, while Amanda Bennett is CEO of USAGM.
contributed to this report.
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