Hundreds gathered Thursday evening in Bridgeport for a night of prayer for a high school senior who went missing nearly a week ago.
18-year-old Estefania Herrera, a senior and member of the swim team at Mother McAuley Liberal Arts High School in Chicago was last seen on Oct. 17, according to Chicago police.
“Please keep an eye out, we just want Estefania home,” her aunt Karen Forbes said after the vigil. “We love you Estefania, please come home.”
Herrera was on her way to a swim meet in Tinley Park when she was last accounted for. The plan was for her to take an early morning CTA bus to a school parking lot to meet her teammates to ride to the meet on a school bus.
However, Herrera “never made it there,” Forbes said.
“She did swipe her Ventura card at the archer Pulaski bus going south, and that was the last trace of her,” Forbes said. She was only roughly six miles from the school.
Herrera was last seen wearing a black and white checkered fleece top with jeans, carrying both a red backpack and a blue backpack.
Her family says she often rode public transit to school and was excited for her senior year.
“She was in the process of filling out college applications, looking forward to graduation,” Forbes said, adding that she wanted to go into the medical field.
Her parents told NBC Chicago that this disappearance is totally out of the ordinary and she did not take much with her when she left early Saturday morning.
In a social media post Monday, the school wrote its “community is praying for the safe return of senior Estefania Herrera.”
“We ask the extended community to join us in keeping Estefania and her family in their thoughts and prayers,” the post read.
Anyone with information is being asked to contact the Chicago Police Department’s Area One Special Victims Unit at (312)747-8380.
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