Zoe E. Penrod

• Missing Since 12/31/2023
• Missing From Humboldt County, California
• Classification Endangered Missing
• Sex Female
• Race White
• Date of Birth 03/18/1984 (41)
• Age 39 years old
• Height and Weight 5'5, 140 pounds
• Clothing/Jewelry Description A beige bathrobe, orange clothes under the robe, and green shoes. A photo of her in those clothes is posted with this case summary.
• Medical Conditions Penrod had been suffering from postpartum psychosis since the birth of her five-month-old son. She had been hospitalized for this shortly before her disappearance.
• Distinguishing Characteristics Caucasian female. Red hair, green eyes. Penrod may use the first name Rhonda.

Details of Disappearance

Penrod began experiencing episodes of mental illness after the birth of her son in July 2023. A week before Christmas in December 2023, she began acting erratically. She heard voices, and she stopped sleeping and stopped eating because she thought her food had been poisoned. Her fiance took her to Garberville Hospital on December 20.

Penrod spend three days in the hospital and was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis and treated with injections of antipsychotic medication. The hospital initially planned to transfer her to a mental health facility. At the end of her 72-hour psychiatric hold, however, the hospital decided to release her instead, both because she had improved and because of a shortage of available psychiatric beds.

She went home to her residence on Boy Scout Road in the Myers Flat area of Humboldt County, California without any prescriptions, and within a few days her psychotic symptoms returned. She was last seen on the morning of December 31, 2023, eight days after being released from the hospital.

She didn't sleep the night before and was pacing and sprinkling holy water on her fiance as he tried to sleep. Then she sat in the yard and when her fiance asked her to come inside, and she just said, "I love you. Bless you." Their baby started crying, and Penrod's fiance took him inside to change his diaper. When he came back out, she was gone.

A surveillance camera at a business a few hundred feet from Penrod's home showed her walking north on the Avenue of the Giants just before 8:30 a.m. She left her wallet and cellular phone behind and has never been heard from again. Her disappearance remains unsolved.