Those phone records would become significant.
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## Redding: A Community Mobilized
The disappearance generated more than national media attention. In Redding, it generated real fear.
Sheriff Tom Bosenko said his department faced extreme pressure to find the alleged captors and resolve the case. Residents who had thought of their community as safe suddenly felt differently. Women who jogged alone reconsidered. Volunteer search efforts had already turned out during the three weeks Papini was missing, with community members participating in grid searches of surrounding areas. Keith Papini’s family had set up search teams. The assumption that something terrible had happened to a young mother out for a run in her own neighborhood activated the kind of civic response that a plausible and sympathetic victim narrative can generate.
The specific nature of Papini’s account — two Hispanic women, an SUV, a kidnapping at gunpoint — also had a targeted effect. Redding’s Latino population was relatively small, constituting less than 10 percent of the city’s residents. Alan Ernesto Phillips, who served as former chairman of the Northern Hispanic Latino Coalition, said the account sent the community “into shock.” He said local Latina women took visible precautions: avoiding walking in pairs, declining to drive alone to work or stores or family gatherings, staying away from situations in which they might be with white women without witnesses present. Some declined to speak with police or local media.
Prosecutors would later note in court filings that community members were calling in tips about “suspicious-looking Hispanic women.” The composite sketches — released in late 2017 — generated more of the same. Radio host Araceli Gutierrez, commenting on the sketches, said of the description, “We know the people in our community.” Many Latino residents in Redding expressed early skepticism about Papini’s account precisely because they understood that any Latina woman could find herself matching the description.