STOCKTON, Calif. — After sleepless nights trying to track down their missing daughter, a Stockton area family was left reeling after her body was found in the Stanislaus River in Ripon.
The bodies of Alyssa Ros and Xylona Gama were found inside a car submerged in the Stanislaus River Tuesday. Alyssa's father Phalnithaba Ros said the two friends had been missing since they came to the area for a Sunday wedding.
Phalnithaba was a doting father to Alyssa. She was born a week before he turned 18, and in his own words, he says they experienced a lot of life's firsts together.
The father and daughter were close, even sharing birthday parties together when Alyssa got older. Even when Pahlnithaba tried to celebrate his daughter's special day separate from his last year, she quietly got him a cake and celebrated their birthdays together anyway.
He said Alyssa was visiting the area for a family wedding. Normally, she'd be at California State University, Los Angeles, studying business and communications. She left Stockton after graduating from Weston Ranch High School in 2016.
"She was outgoing, you know, beautiful, had a glowing white smile, and she was one of those fashionistas in the high school," he said, adding that his daughter was both smart and an athlete while in school.
Life took Alyssa to Cal State LA, where she continued her studies and also got a job in modeling. Her life took her to Mexico, Florida, and New York for work, and she even had jobs for TV commercials, music videos, catalogs, books, and magazines, her father said.
The father and daughter would eventually reunite at a family wedding, where they took pictures and had fun.
However, Phalnithaba had to cut his night short after getting a call that his other children wouldn't stop crying at home. He rushed back, forgetting to say goodbye to Alyssa in the rush.
"I called her and she said 'It's OK, daddy. I'm fine. You know, just go take care of the boys. I'm around family. Nothing's gonna happen to me,'" he recalled.
About an hour later, he said Alyssa called him to let her know that she, her friend, and some other wedding guests were on their way to his house.
"Everyone shows up at my house, and my daughter doesn't show up with her friend. And I was wondering, 'What's going on?' I call her phone. It's dead," he said.
He called her friends phone, but the call went straight to voicemail. He tried going to sleep thinking that they had cut their night short as well.
"I called every couple hours just to see if they had their phone on getting charged. No one picked up," he said.
When the morning broke, the phones were still dead, and by the evening, he still hadn't heard from Alyssa, and reached out to the police.
"That Monday night, I could not sleep. I woke up every 40 minutes, on the dot almost, to call both of them. I was just hoping that they would show up, so every car that drove by, I went to go look at the window. Every car alarm that was beeping, I went to go look out the window. Every person that was walking by talking, I would go look out the window," he said.
On Tuesday, the father took action into his own hands, setting off to look for her. After searching in Ripon and Stockton, he got a message from a friend.
It was screenshot of a tweet from a Ripon golf course employee saying that he found two missing girls dead in the Stanislaus River.
He rushed to the golf course but said the management blocked him from going onto the green to protect the investigation. But eventually, he learned the truth for himself, that his daughter and her friend were dead.
"My heart fell just out of my chest, you know, and I just broke down. That was something that I just didn't want to hear. It's unreal," he said.
It's not clear how the girls and the car wound up in the river and golf course.
Ripon Police Sgt. Jared Heuvel said police are doing all they can to track down answers.
"It's very tragic incident. Anytime you have something of this magnitude, it just breaks families' hearts and impacts the public. Obviously, there's concern from the public, and it's a concern to us too," Sgt. Heuvel said.
For now, Phalnithaba is left in mourning with few answers as to how his daughter died.
While the investigation is ongoing, Sgt. Heuvel said that at this time, no foul play is suspected. A GoFundMe for the family can be found HERE.
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