Into the Depths: The Search for Missing 22-Year-Old Jalissa Fuentes

When the sun dipped below the dusty ridges outside Selma, California, on August 6, 2022, 22-year-old Jalissa Fuentes was still awake. Family said she’d been out with friends that evening — laughing, talking, arguing, as young adults do — before heading home briefly to grab a few things. Surveillance footage later captured her at a local convenience store just after midnight. In the grainy video, she appears calm, purposeful. Then she walks out, climbs into her 2011 silver Hyundai sedan, and drives off into the night.

That was the last time anyone saw her alive.

A Vanishing Without a Trace

Selma Police Chief Rudy Alcaraz told reporters weeks later, “There’s nothing overtly that leads us to believe a criminal act has occurred. However, Miss Fuentes has been gone a long time, and this is not normal behavior.”

The case immediately unsettled residents of Fresno County. Jalissa wasn’t a drifter or someone known for disappearing. Friends described her as responsible, grounded — the kind of young woman who always called home. “Something’s wrong,” her family repeated to anyone who would listen.

Investigators tracked her phone activity and discovered that her last digital “ping” came from a remote stretch northeast of town — a rugged landscape of canyons, lakes, and pine forests near Avocado Lake and Pine Flat Reservoir, where Jalissa had reportedly been before.

For weeks, law enforcement combed the area with little to show. Then, in a move that would soon make national headlines, they called in an unconventional ally — Adventures With Purpose (AWP), a volunteer dive and recovery team that had just located the submerged car of another missing California teen, Kiely Rodney, in Prosser Creek Reservoir.

The Divers Who Bring the Dead Home

When Doug Bishop of Adventures With Purpose appeared on Law & Crime’s Sidebar podcast, hosted by Jesse Weber, his calm voice carried the weary conviction of a man who has seen too much.

“We started as an environmental cleanup group,” Bishop explained. “Our founder, Jared Lysak, was diving to pull trash and vehicles out of rivers. But when human remains began turning up inside those cars — when we realized we were bringing families closure — that became our mission.”

The transformation was organic and tragic. Over time, AWP became one of the most respected civilian dive units in the United States, their YouTube channel boasting more than 2.2 million subscribers. They have located over two dozen missing persons — many of them long-cold cases — by combining sonar technology with sheer persistence.

“In the beginning, law enforcement didn’t always welcome us,” Bishop admitted. “Now, it’s the opposite. They call us. If there’s water involved, we’re one of the first names that come up.”

Science, Sonar, and the Murky Unknown

Adventures With Purpose’s edge comes from technology and experience. Using a combination of side-scan sonar, down-imaging sonar, and live-scope sonar, the team can visualize objects beneath the surface — even in zero visibility water where the human eye sees nothing but black.

“It can detect almost anything underwater,” Bishop said. “Not just cars — sometimes even bodies, depending on conditions.”

Once the sonar returns a promising shape — perhaps a shadowed rectangle or a glint of metal — divers descend to confirm it. “We’re not in pretty water,” Bishop said. “We’re in cold, dark places — no visibility, heavy currents, trees, and debris. It’s dangerous. But we’re confident in pushing limits to give families answers.”

The Call to Search for Jalissa

In August, just as AWP was completing its recovery of Kiely Rodney’s vehicle, word spread about Jalissa’s disappearance. Her family — desperate and determined — reached out to the divers.

“The fight her family has is unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” Bishop told Weber. “They were working hand in hand with law enforcement, with us, with anyone who would listen.”

Over several days, Bishop and his team coordinated with the Fresno County Sheriff’s Office and the Selma Police Department to methodically clear the region’s major bodies of water — including Avocado Lake, Pine Flat Lake, and stretches of the Kings River.

The work was painstaking. Sonar sweeps, data analysis, dives, and verification. By the end of the operation, AWP ruled out every known lake in the target area. There was no car. No trace of Jalissa.

For many families, that would mean despair. But for Bishop, it meant something else: hope.

“I’m in a way glad I didn’t find them,” he said softly. “Because I didn’t want to take hope from the family. This is a fresh case. By ruling out those waterways, it takes the investigation in a new direction. It leaves hope that Jalissa is still out there.”

Turning Toward a Darker Possibility

With the lakes cleared, the case’s focus shifted. What had once been considered a missing-person scenario now looked increasingly like foul play.

“We’re focusing on the possibility that this is a criminal act,” Bishop told Weber. “Somebody has done something to her. Somebody has taken her. Her family believes it — and frankly, so do I.”

Police confirmed the case was now being treated as a potential abduction. Jalissa’s phone records suggested movement into the hills but then abruptly stopped. No bank activity, no social media, no sign of her Hyundai.

Among the family’s growing fears was human trafficking, a theory investigators have not ruled out. “She’s a beautiful, intelligent young woman,” Bishop said. “There are no red flags in her life — nothing that explains a voluntary disappearance.”

The Mechanics of Hope

If you talk to the families AWP has helped, a pattern emerges: relief mixed with heartbreak. The divers bring closure, but closure often means confirmation of the worst. In Jalissa’s case, however, ruling out the water meant the opposite — a reason to believe she might still be alive.

“Usually, I feel like the bad guy,” Bishop confessed. “I’m the one looking for the worst-case scenario. But this time, success meant we could still hope.”

Jalissa’s family continued their own searches, hanging flyers across California and launching social media campaigns that spread nationwide. Meanwhile, AWP moved on to assist in other missing-person cases — including that of 75-year-old Annette Adams, last seen driving a black Buick Enclave near California’s Point Arena coast.

Each case carried its own heartbreak. Each demanded new risks. “No other agency will dive where we go,” Bishop said of the Adams search. “It’s deadly terrain. But we go because someone has to.”

The Risks Beneath the Surface

For all their technology and expertise, AWP divers face constant danger. They dive in freezing temperatures, blind conditions, and treacherous currents.

“Every dive is challenging,” Bishop said. “You’re working in places where others won’t. Sometimes it’s a reservoir with trees and fishing lines. Sometimes it’s a cliffside plunge into the Pacific. You can’t see your own hand. You’re relying on training and instinct.”

The stakes are high. A single misstep could cost a diver his life. Yet the mission remains the same: find the missing, bring peace to the living.

The Unseen Cost

When Weber asked how Bishop copes with the emotional toll of the job, his voice softened.

“It’s hard,” he said. “You see families in pain, mothers begging for answers. You go home and you think about them. But you remind yourself — you’re doing something good. You’re giving them something they can’t get anywhere else: the truth.”

For Jalissa’s mother, Norma Nuñez, that truth is still out there somewhere — floating between hope and horror. She continues to organize community searches and candlelight vigils, praying for the day when her daughter’s name will be spoken not as a mystery but as a memory.

A Beacon in the Darkness

The rise of Adventures With Purpose marks a quiet revolution in how America searches for its missing. Once dismissed as amateur divers with cameras, they’ve become a trusted auxiliary force for law enforcement nationwide.

Their secret is simple: relentless focus. While police departments juggle hundreds of active cases, AWP zeroes in on one question — if there’s water nearby, could the missing be there?

And often, the answer is yes.

Their recoveries — from Oregon to Tennessee, from frozen lakes to sunken cars — have turned despair into closure for dozens of families.

“It’s a unique skill set,” Bishop said. “There’s no school for this. You learn it by doing it, by failing, by trying again.”

Jalissa’s Legacy

As of this writing, Jalissa Fuentes remains missing. Her story, like too many others, is suspended between investigation and grief. But it has also illuminated the invisible network of people — divers, police, volunteers, and journalists — who refuse to let her name fade into silence.

Every time Adventures With Purpose launches their sonar into another lake, every time a family calls them in desperation, Jalissa’s face is among the reasons they keep going.

“She represents every missing person out there,” Bishop said. “When we search for one, we search for all.”

Epilogue: The Water and the Light

In the California heat, Avocado Lake shimmers deceptively calm. The surface is smooth now, but beneath lies the memory of search boats, divers, and sonar beams tracing invisible patterns. The team has moved on to new waters, new cases, new heartbreaks — but somewhere in the hills, Jalissa’s story still lingers.

It’s written on every flyer taped to a gas station door, every Facebook post pleading for information, every quiet prayer from a mother who refuses to give up.

And it echoes, too, in Doug Bishop’s voice — steady, resolute, weary yet unbroken — as he closes another interview and prepares for the next dive.

“We’re not heroes,” he says. “We just go where others can’t. If we can bring one person home, one family peace, then it’s worth everything.”