Update: On Wednesday, May 11, 2022, Nina Rose was located in Venice Beach, California by her sister Brittney, after she learned Nina's debit card had been used there. It is unclear at this time what happened to Nina. "Right now, we're just more concerned with loving on her and helping her heal," Brittney told Dateline in a text in which she also expressed gratitude to the many strangers who offered support in the search for her sister.
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It has been almost two weeks since 25-year-old Nina Rose was last seen in Inglewood, California. Brittney Rose, one of Nina’s sisters, told Dateline that the entire family is extremely worried about Nina’s well-being. “She’s the baby -- the baby of the family,” she said.
The Rose family grew up in the West Los Angeles area. They spent their time hanging out together and going to the beach. “The beach has always been our peaceful place,” Brittney said.
Brittney says that Nina was always very studious. “She's still the most intelligent girl I know. I mean, straight-A student. She was in the newspaper in Lancaster for having the highest GPA,” Brittney told Dateline. “She was the one that, you know, everyone's like, ‘Yeah, she's -- she's gonna be the rich one in the family.’”
Nina’s cousin Christina Jaus told Dateline that she used to babysit Nina and her siblings. “I'm a little bit older than them,” Christina said, adding that she often felt more like an aunt than a cousin. She said that growing up, Nina was “very sweet, very bright. You know, just one of those happy, playful kids.”
Christina lives in New York and told Dateline that the past few weeks have been extremely difficult since hearing that Nina was missing on the other side of the country. “It's painful because, you know, I've always felt a sense of responsibility for them,” she said. “I'm always wanting to take care of them. And so not being there has been -- has been hard.”
Christina looked back fondly at the time Nina moved to the East Coast and lived with her for a little bit. “She lived with me for probably about three or four months,” Christina said. “She did well while she was here, but I think the distance just became too much. And so then she ended up moving back to California.”
Brittney told Dateline that her little sister got a partial scholarship to UC Santa Barbara where she started out studying psychology. Nina had been attending the university for a few years when Brittney recalled something shifted.
“I don’t know if something happened on campus. We believe something might have happened,” Brittney said, and Nina “kinda hasn’t been the same since.”
Nina took some time off from college, but Brittney told Dateline that her sister was determined to finish her degree. “Her passion was really trying to finish school,” Brittney said. “She actually did go back to finish,” Brittney noted. “She took about a year or two off and she went back at the beginning of the year.” That was in January of 2022.
Unfortunately, Brittney said, Nina got into a car accident not long after returning to the university. “She was injured from the car accident,” Brittney told Dateline. But luckily, it wasn’t anything too serious. “Just, like, bruises and bumps and stuff like that,” she said.
Nina’s car was not as lucky. “Her car was totaled in that accident,” Brittney said, so her sister would have been getting around on foot.
Nina had been putting herself through school, while working as a caregiver, at a retail job and being a DoorDash driver to support herself.
After the accident, Brittney told Dateline that Nina was struggling and needed to try and get back on her feet. “She came back to LA to try to settle down again and take some more time off work,” Brittney said. “I was trying to convince her to come up to Riverside and live with me, but, you know, she's one of those, ‘I want to do it on my own’ type.”
Nina checked herself into the Adventurer Hotel on Century Boulevard, near family in Inglewood, California. Despite being close to family, Brittney told Dateline that Nina didn’t like asking for help and wanted to try to make it on her own.
Brittney last spoke with Nina on April 26, 2022, and thought that she seemed a little stressed out. “I know that she was kind of running out of money and I was trying to convince her to come up here and live with me and she was being -- she was being stubborn, still on wanting to do things on her own,” Brittney said.
“The 27th is when the hotel said she checked out. The 28th is the last time her phone was active at 4:00 p.m.,” Brittney said.
“I found out that her phone was off that Friday night,” Brittney said. That was April 29. “We were a little concerned. But we were, like, you know, ‘Maybe she didn't charge her phone.’”
The family waited a few days, hoping Nina would get in contact. “Saturday and Sunday passed and no one still had heard from her,” Brittney said. “I called Monday morning and filed a missing persons report.”
That was May 2. “I drove down there that day and we walked around with her picture asking multiple people,” Brittney said. “There were about three or four people that said that they’d seen her.”
Brittney told Dateline that those witnesses all told her basically the same thing: They remembered seeing Nina three days earlier, which would have been Friday the 29th, in the area surrounding the hotel in Inglewood. They said Nina was on foot and had some bags with her.
Brittney said that the reason Nina was staying at that specific hotel was because they had weekly rates. “It's not the Hilton,” Brittney said. “I know that it's not that great of an area where she went missing from.”
Brittney told Dateline that since April 29, calls to Nina’s phone have been going straight to voicemail and texts are not going through. “She hasn’t used her debit card since the 27th, so her bank account has had no activity on it,” she added.
Brittney said that over this past weekend, a detective from the Inglewood Police Department was finally assigned to Nina’s case. Dateline contacted the Inglewood Police Department and spoke with Lieutenant Geoffrey Meeks and Lieutenant Scott Collins from the Press Information Office. They provided a press release which confirms that Nina was last in contact with family on April 28 and was reported missing on May 2. The release states that Nina is an at-risk missing person. In an email, Lt. Meeks wrote, “In addition to the information presented within this Press Release, this case is currently under active investigation by Detective Jon Thompson of the Inglewood Police Departments Missing Person’s Unit.”
Brittney told Dateline that once a detective was assigned to the case, she was “just grateful that they actually assigned somebody,” but she expressed frustration that valuable time may have been lost in the search for her sister, and concern that security footage from the time Nina was last seen might no longer be available.
Christina told Dateline she felt the same frustration as her cousin Brittney. “I think for me the biggest -- the biggest issue is, you know, not having the police move on it quickly,” she said. “The longer it goes on, the less likely you are to be able to identify or find information.”
Brittney feels like there has been very little assistance when it comes to actually searching for Nina. “It was just me and my sister and a couple of my friends, and then my uncle went out,” she said.
They created flyers to help spread the word about Nina’s disappearance. “We taped them up all around the area. There were businesses that allowed us to tape them up. We went to Hollywood and taped them up from Sunset to La Brea, and all down the Walk of Fame on Wednesday,” Brittney told Dateline.
All the way across the country, Christina told Dateline that she is at a loss for what to do. “It’s one of the things that, as a woman, you're fearful of, but it's just, I don't know,” she said. “It's like -- I feel useless.” But she does what she can, “trying to use Twitter and -- and trying to spread the word,” she said. “And trying to be as emotionally and psychologically available to [Nina’s sisters] on the phone and calling and checking. And, you know, writing whatever -- whoever I need to, because as painful as it is for me, I know this is their sister, you know?”
Nina said that despite dealing with mental health issues previously, Brittney would never have gone this long without communicating with her family. “If anything, it might have been like a day or two that we didn't hear from her,” Brittney said.
Her cousin, Christina, agrees. “Even in the moments that have been down, she has always stayed in communication,” Christina told Dateline. “She has always, you know, like been very clear about, like, ‘I'm just not feeling emotionally up to it right now.’ Like, ‘I just need a minute to myself.’ But it's always been in communication, and there's never been like anything like this, you know?”
Brittney doesn’t believe Nina was seeing anyone new at the time of her disappearance, but she told Dateline that “Nina is very trusting, very soft-spoken.” She believes that if her sister was feeling stressed or dealing with mental health issues, “she might have trusted the wrong person.”
Nina is 5’4” and weighs approximately 120 lbs. She has a tattoo of a phoenix and a crescent moon on her forearm, and a flower near her ear. She has brown eyes and curly brown hair, that she will sometimes straighten. Nina has a caramel complexion and, according to Brittney, “has a pretty smile. She has deep dimples.”
Ultimately, Brittney just wants her baby sister home and asks that everyone keep an eye out for Nina. “You know, the more eyes, the more possibilities that we can find her.”
If you have information about Nina’s disappearance or whereabouts, please call the Inglewood Police Department Watch Commander’s Office at 310-412-5206.