PORT TOWNSEND –– A tip that the Sequim woman missing since May 1 had been spotted in suburban Seattle has yet to yield any information as law enforcement officials continue their search.
“We got a tip. A guy said he saw her on a bus in Shoreline,” Port Townsend Police Chief Conner Daily said Sunday.
“We’ve been trying to get some confirmation as far as tape or video, but so far, there hasn’t been anything to say she was there.”
Port Townsend police have led an investigation into the whereabouts of 23-year-old Lauryn R. Garrett, a 2009 graduate of Sequim High School, since she disappeared after being last seen in the Port Townsend Safeway on the evening of May 1.
Daily said detectives continued to investigate over the weekend, but had not told Daily they found any leads.
“If they had found something, they would have gotten a hold of me, and I haven’t gotten anything from them,” Daily said.
The Safeway surveillance footage which showed Garrett buying vodka and soda was captured just before 8 p.m. May 1, shortly after she borrowed a cell phone at the Haines Place Park and Ride to call her father, Fred Garrett of Sequim.
Jefferson County Search and Rescue volunteers searched around the 80-acre Kah Tai Lagoon Nature Park near Safeway and next to the bus depot last Thursday night with county sheriff’s deputies and a police detective. Searchers in kayaks also checked the banks of the lagoon.
A special task force of Port Townsend police detectives, officials from Clallam and Jefferson county sheriff’s offices and an FBI agent out of the Poulsbo office has been formed to investigate Garrett’s disappearance.
Garrett had left a rehabilitation clinic in Sedro-Woolley a day before she was scheduled to return.
Fred Garrett has told the Peninsula Daily News he expected to pick his daughter up at the Port Townsend ferry dock May 2.
After the call from the park and ride, he expected her to take a bus to Sequim, he said.
The last bus from Port Townsend to Sequim leaves at 5:50 p.m. on weekdays.
She was seen leaving two duffel bags near the park and ride before walking to Safeway, police said.
One of the bags was found in the bushes near the Kah Tai Lagoon park on May 7 by the missing woman’s mother, Eleana Livingston-Christanson of Sequim.
The other bag still has not been found.
Film crews from the Investigation Discovery network show “Disappeared” arrived in Sequim last Wednesday evening and are planning to feature Garrett’s story in a future episode of the show.
Producers told the Peninsula Daily News last week they were unsure when the episode will air.
Lauryn Garrett is 5 feet, 7 inches tall and weighs between 120 and 130 pounds. She has brown hair and hazel eyes.
She has a tattoo of a bird behind her left ear and a tattoo of Washington state on her right wrist.
Anyone with information about Garrett’s whereabouts should phone police at 360-385-3831, ext. 1, or, if it’s an emergency matter, 9-1-1.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Joe Smillie can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or at jsmillie@peninsuladailynews.com.
