“She’s everyone’s grandma. She can be anyone’s mom. She won’t let no one go hungry,” Taina Roper told Dateline of her mother, Elena De La Cruz. “She was just a very gentle woman. A very gentle and kind woman.”
She has two daughters, five grandchildren and one great-grandchild. She moved from Puerto Rico to New York when she was just 6 years old.
And now, she’s been missing for nearly two years.
Elena, 62, was last seen on security footage leaving her apartment building on Grand Avenue in the Morris Heights neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City on July 10, 2021.
Dateline spoke with Elena’s daughter, Taina Roper, who said the Bronx-based grandmother had been previously diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, but had recently been told she was in remission. Taina, who lives in Virginia, told Dateline that the family was really excited to receive the news. “Her and my sister were supposed to come the following week to celebrate,” Taina said.
Taina said that her mother called her the day before she disappeared and asked what kind of special treats she and the family wanted her to bring from New York when she visited. “Every time she visits, 90% of her suitcase is filled with cookies, candy or snacks for her grandkids,” Taina said. The two exchanged “I love yous” and looked forward to their upcoming reunion.
But that trip to Virginia to celebrate never happened.
Taina said that due to her chemotherapy treatments, Elena was “known to get sleepy during the day” causing her to be “super energetic” at night. Taina believes that may have been the case the night she went missing.
Elena was a regular at the bodega a block from her apartment and it wasn’t uncommon for her to go there at night to “get her Honey Bun, her M&Ms and her Ensure,” Taina told Dateline. She said her mother called her on the evening of her disappearance around 11 p.m. but Taina was already asleep. She checked her voicemail in the morning. “Hey, Taina, it’s Mommy,” the voicemail said. “Call when you get a chance. Love you. Bye.” That was the last time Taina was contacted by her mom.
Taina said her mother was well-known in her building, where she had been living for about 5 years, and would always greet everyone she passed. So when the beloved “neighborhood grandma” hadn’t been seen for a few days, building management reached out to Taina to ask if she knew where Elena was. She did not. Taina said she then reached out to her sister, Jamie, to see if their mother had reached out to her. She had not. Following that conversation, the sisters spent time trying to make contact with their mother, calling her phone multiple times with no response.
They decided to give their mother another day to respond to them before escalating the situation. They kept calling her, Taina explained, but “my mother’s phone rang and it rang, and then voicemail picked up, and then next time we called… It was turned off.”
Taina said that at that point, they decided it was time to involve law enforcement. The NYPD told Dateline that a missing person report was taken from the 46th precinct, but it is unclear exactly what date that was. They posted about Elena’s disappearance for the first time on their Twitter account on September 21, 2021. Dateline reached out to the NYPD with detailed questions about Elena’s case. NYPD has not yet responded to those questions but did offer information that was already “provided to the media.”
Taina told Dateline that there was no footage obtained from the street along Elena’s route to the bodega, but that they were able to pull footage of her walking out of her building around 11:30 p.m. on the evening of July 10. She said that in that footage, her mother was seen wearing her usual blonde wig and was carrying a small bag. She was wearing a white short-sleeved striped shirt, gray or green pants/leggings and orange sandals/slip-ons.
When asked if authorities searched her mother’s home, Taina told Dateline that they did. “They basically told us that it looks like she was supposed to come back because she made dinner,” Tiana recalled. “The food was on a stove -- a little plate was there that she was supposed to eat out of.”
Something else that stood out to Taina was her mother’s Kindle. She said that Elena was an avid Candy Crush player and would play on her Kindle. She said her mother would never leave the Kindle behind. “Let me tell you, if she missed her Candy Crush, the whole world was going down,” Taina said. According to Taina, Elena also left her ID, her food stamp card, her birth certificate, and “anything that would be imperative to someone leaving.”
According to Taina, when the family checked Elena’s bank account, “not one penny has been spent” since the day she disappeared.
Taina said that the family connected with a group called Hope Alive 845 which helped create and distribute missing fliers. The family also reached out to local hospitals to see if anyone had seen or heard from Elena. Taina, who works for the Charlottesville, Virginia Police Department, was encouraged by her colleagues to have her DNA encoded so it could be entered into the system to look for a match. Taina told Dateline that her colleagues from the Charlottesville PD said, “‘How about we pay for the expenses, and we will send you the kit over there?’”
So Taina got the kit, swabbed her cheek and sent it up to New York City to be added to Elena’s file. She told Dateline the NYPD entered the DNA into their system and also set up a NamUs page for Elena.
Taina says that there has been no trace of her mother in the past two years.
She said they are desperate to know what happened to the woman who loves all things arts and crafts.
The woman who is an “extraordinary cook.”
The woman who loves to dance and give back to her community.
Taina told Dateline that Elena is hard of hearing and speaks little English, as her native language is Spanish.
She also described her mother as having a tooth that was noticeably out of line on her top set of teeth. Taina said that her mother had a chemotherapy port in her chest at the time of her disappearance, which means that if a Jane Doe were found with a port, there would be an ID number on it that could be traced, possibly to Elena. Lastly, Taina added that her mother had undergone a mastectomy and if found, would only have one breast.
On October 16, 2021, the NYPD Missing person unit posted another alert about Elena on Twitter that states that Elena is a Hispanic female, she is 5’3” and weighs between 100 and 110 lbs., with dark eyes.
Anyone with information about Elena’s case is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). If you speak Spanish you can call 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips on the Crime Stoppers website or on Twitter @NYPDTips.