Before Gabby Petito, This Woman Vanished in the Wild West

She was an adventurous young woman who left her hometown on the East Coast for a new life with her boyfriend out West—and then just vanished.

She is not Gabby Petito, the missing white woman who became a social media fixation after she disappeared in similar circumstances last month and has since been found slain.

She is Lauren “El” Cho, and many people believe her June 28 disappearance from Morongo Valley in the California desert near Palm Springs received relatively little attention because she is a woman of color. Three months later, the 30-year-old’s friends and family can only put their faith in the police and hope that somebody who knows something will come forward.

“It’s still just a total mystery,” her close friend RJ Okay told The Daily Beast this week.

Cho’s boyfriend was Cody Orell, a professional roadie and keyboard technician who met her on Memorial Day of 2020 and invited her to begin a whole new life aboard a touring bus that had been idled by the pandemic. She accepted, and they set off from New Jersey at the end of the year.

As with Petito, Cho’s disappearance was preceded by an argument with her boyfriend, though Okay says it did not escalate beyond a brief verbal exchange. Cho and Orell had recently broken up and they had a brief dispute over a car they continued to share.

“It sounds like it might not have been a major thing that had her walk off from where she was, but then something major happens,” Okay later told The Daily Beast.

Cho was last seen striding away from the bus around 3 p.m. She was wearing a yellow T-shirt, jean shorts, and Doc Martens boots. She could likely handle herself in a physical struggle, having earned a black belt in taekwondo when she was 12.

Orell told Okay and a local newspaper that he went into the bus without seeing which direction Cho headed. He later reported that over the next few minutes he became worried about her wandering in the desert heat and set out in search of her.

She was nowhere to be seen, and Orell sought help from Okay and other friends.

“Guys, I can’t find El,” he said by Okay’s account.

The friends joined in searching the area surrounding the small artists’ community where they had settled. Okay told The Daily Beast that he did not think Orell could have harmed Cho because there would not have been enough time.

“He would have only had 10 minutes,” Okay said.

Orell contacted the Morongo Basin sheriff’s station at 5:13 p.m. A police helicopter circled overhead as a search and rescue team joined the effort. The searchers came upon their own tracks as they repeatedly scoured the area, but they saw not so much as a single print of Cho’s Doc Martens. She seemed to have literally vanished without a trace.

“No tracks or anything,” Okay said. “She’s just gone.”

Police executed a search warrant on July 31 and brought in seven tracking and cadaver dogs. Okay says that a deputy told him the sheriff’s office had taken an interest in a number of men Cho had begun dating. But, Okay notes, Cho had always driven to the dates in a car she still shared with Orell, and on the day she disappeared, she had set off on foot.

Okay also notes that the property where they were living is two miles down a dirt road, so there was no way Cho could have caught a ride from a passing car. Okay adds that she would not have been able to call for somebody to pick her up because she had left behind her phone along with her wallet. He says her phone indicated she had not contacted anybody immediately prior to her disappearance.

She had also left her computer and Pork Chop, the green miniature parrot she had brought with her when she left New Jersey eight months before. The desert heat had begun to adversely affect the bird and Cho had briefly given it to a friend in Topanga Canyon. But she had soon after reconsidered and she reclaimed it. She would fret if she had to leave the bird for even a night.

Okay, who also has a passion for birds and keeps chickens and peacocks, told The Daily Beast that residents of the enclave had immediately bonded with Cho when she arrived at the end of last year. A photo from what appears to have been her 30th birthday shows them sitting at a big table with a chocolate cake and a smiling, collective glow.

“Family,” Okay said. “I’ve never met mostly strangers who just got along so well.”

Cho had been one blessing that the pandemic brought into their lives.

“If it wasn’t for COVID, Cody would have been on the road,” Okay said. “Cody wouldn’t have been looking to stay out west. But every tour was canceled.”

Instead of going from gig to gig to gig, the bus stayed in the California desert, going from a ghost town turned small artist’s community called Bombay Beach to a friend’s property in nearby Morongo Valley.

Back in New Jersey, Cho had been raised in a religious Korean American household. She had straddled two worlds as she worked in a tattoo/piercing parlor and attended Westminster Choir College. She was a golden-throated soprano who had gone on choral tours in Europe and had taught music in a high school. She soloed for years with the choir at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lambertville, N.J.

“Absolutely exquisite,” Father Daniel Somers said of her voice.

The choir went virtual after COVID hit and Cho continued to sing for the Sunday service via Zoom after she headed west in Orell’s bus.

“Actually en route,” Somers told The Daily Beast. “She would perform in Kansas and in places like that.”

She would sometimes be joined by Pork Chop.

“He would chirp along with her,” Somers said. “We’re all very fond of Pork Chop.”

Because of the time difference after Cho reached California, Pork Chop was liable to still be dozing early each Sunday morning when Cho went into a recording studio that occupies half of Okay’s trailer. She would rehearse for half an hour at 6 a.m. PST and then perform for the 9:30 a.m. EST service.

“Sometimes [Pork Chop] was asleep,” Somers said. “Other times, he would perk up and participate.”

Cho’s voice would be as exquisite as always.

“It transports us,” Somers said.

The same singing would welcome Okay to a new day.

“It was lovely to wake up to,” Okay would remember.

Cho was also an accomplished chef and supported herself by arranging to cook for people who stayed at a nearby Airbnb. She regularly made dinners for her desert friends and wowed everybody with a specialty: vegan basil ice cream. Nobody doubted that the school bus she had begun converting into a food truck would be anything but a big success.

Her new life took a turn by late June, when Cho and her boyfriend decided to break up. Okay told The Daily Beast that Cho confided in him and her desert friends that she had already been battling depression and had sometimes considered suicide.

But on Sunday, June 27, Cho sounded like her incandescent self when she performed for another Sunday service at St. Andrew’s. One of the other choir members failed to show and she sang that person’s two hymns in addition to the one she had been assigned.

“She was in good form,” Somers said.

However perfect she sounded, Cho remained troubled that night. The desert folks usually go to bed as early as 9 p.m., but Cho said she was not ready for sleep, and Okay stayed up with her. The two sat in the swimming pool, talking until 2 a.m. about the breakup and other things. Her mood seemed to brighten considerably by the time they went off to their separate beds.

Orell had been helping Cho convert her school bus and she texted Okay later on July 28, offering to pay him to assist her. Okay says he replied “no problem” and told her there was no need to pay him.

She seemed to Okay to be focused on the future.

“She was so motivated,” he noted.

She texted him back at 1:17 p.m.

“Thank you,” she said, adding a happy emoji.

Less than two hours later, Cho vanished.

“Even if she had wanted to do something to herself, how could she have gotten away without leaving tracks or not being spotted?” Okay wondered.

Okay says that Orell afterward blamed himself for not at least seeing which direction Cho had been headed.

“He’s thinking to himself, ‘I wish I stayed outside, I wish I stayed outside,’” Okay recalled.

Okay told The Daily Beast that the disappearance was heart-wrenching for all of Cho’s desert friends. He suggests that this in itself was a reason she would not have voluntarily vanished.

“She would know what this was putting us through,” Okay said. “She never would have put us through this.”

After her disappearance and the ensuing frantic search, her desert friends distributed missing person flyers and chipped in to hire a private detective to help find her. The PI was only able to report that the police were actively pursuing the case.

In the meantime, her friends sought to spread word of Cho's disappearance on social media and began working on a video to further that effort. Okay told The Daily Beast that they stopped at the request of Cho’s family in New Jersey, who he says asked them not to speak to the media.

The administrator of the Facebook page “Missing Person: Lauren ‘El’ Cho,” which serves as a contact point for the Cho family, told The Daily Beast via message that no such request had been made. But in response to an interview request from The Daily Beast, the administrator wrote, “We are currently not looking to speak with any news sites at this time.”

A Sept. 18 posting on the page addressed the comparisons being made online between the Cho case and the Petito case.

“We would like to take a moment to acknowledge the messages and questions that have come our way this past week regarding the Gabby Petito case in comparison to what is happening with El,” the posting began, “We realize that on the surface, the public information for both cases share some similarities.”

The posting then acknowledged the complaints many people had made online about the relative lack of media attention Cho had received as compared to Petito. More than a few people had suggested that this was at least partly due to Petito being white.

“We understand the frustration many of you have expressed about how and why certain cases receive national coverage,” the posting continued.

But the posting then said, “Ultimately, these two cases are NOT the same and the differences run deeper than what meets the public eye.”

The posting concluded, “We are wholly appreciative of the love that continues to be shown to El. We empathize deeply with Gabby's family and hope that both our cases bring forth positive resolution.

“Somebody knows something. About El, about Gabby…”

That was the same day that a female body was found in Grand Teton National Park near where Petito’s white van had been spotted; a day later the remains were confirmed as hers. There is still hope for Cho and on Sept. 20, the Cho Facebook page posted a photo of her hugging her niece in happier times.

“El is many things… a talented musician, an incredible baker, a hilarious and loyal friend, a strangely intuitive gift giver, and probably the coolest sister one could hope for~

“But this is where El really shines: as an aunt.

“The love she has for her nibling is unmatched. Even among family, the consensus is that her nibling is the person El loves most in this world.”

The page went on to address amateur cybersleuths and others for whom Cho might now join Petito as a social-media fixation.

“Just a gentle reminder that El is an actual person who is fiercely loved by many~ and we see the posts, comments, and speculations made about her situation, her family, her friends, her mental health… and one day, El’s nibling is bound to come across all of this because nothing on the internet truly goes away. So continue to be respectful, good people. Continue to remember her name and that she hasn’t been found yet—and we need her home.”

The posting then repeated, “Somebody knows something.”

On Tuesday, Sept. 21, the day the Petito case was officially ruled a homicide, the Cho page posted an update released by the San Bernardino Sheriff's Office.

“Investigators with San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Specialized Investigations Division are assisting the Morongo Basin Station in the effort to locate Lauren Cho. Investigators are investigating all leads and working with family and friends of Ms. Cho. Future search operations will occur as further leads develop.”

When contacted by The Daily Beast, the sheriff’s office would only say the investigation is active and ongoing. Orell could not be reached for comment; Okay reported that he is back on the road with his bus, touring. He also said that Pork Chop had died after being adopted by the friend in Topanga Canyon.

On Sunday mornings Okay no longer awakes to Cho’s heavenly singing. And each 9:30 a.m. service at Saint Andrew’s is one without her exquisite voice.

“We would love to hear her again,” Somers told The Daily Beast.

He added, “It’s an absence. Hopefully, it resolves in her favor and she returns to us.”

Out in the California desert, Okay says that he and Cho’s friends there still have two pints of her vegan basil ice cream in the freezer, saved for a special occasion.