Maria Cortes was a Mexican national working as a housekeeper and child care provider who was last seen alive about 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 3, 1992, when she picked up her two-year-old daughter Briana from a relative’s house in East San Diego. She sometimes took multiple buses or walked at night to get home and occasionally accepted rides from strangers to avoid long trips.

At about 7:15 a.m. the next morning, officers found Cortes’ body in a muddy field behind a shopping center at 7500 Mission Valley Road. She had been strangled and stabbed in the groin. Briana was sitting on top of her mother, crying and suffering hypothermia but essentially uninjured; she ran into the arms of a female officer when police arrived.

Cortes’ family described her as a devoted mother focused on building a better life for Briana and becoming a legal citizen. Does anyone who lived near Linda Vista or Mission Valley in March 1992 recall seeing Maria, Briana, or anyone offering them a ride that evening?