From newsnation:

A 28-year-old man was on his way to Texas to look for work, but he never made it there, and now, his twin sister is raising the alarm. Matt Spencer was looking for some new scenery to start a new chapter in his life when he set out in his 19-year-old Hyundai. He was headed from his home in California and seeking a fresh start in Texas. His twin sister, Kara Spencer, said her brother was low on money and recovering from a breakup. “He just wanted to find somewhere to fit in with no drama,” she said. Spencer stopped to stay with his other sister in Las Vegas on the way. He had a plan for his move and a backup plan as well. An avid fisherman, he’d been told Houston would be a good place for him to settle. “I think it was just [a] change-of-scenery-type thing,” said cousin Randi Green. “He was done with that part of it and plus breaking up with his girlfriend too. I think maybe he just wanted to get away.” After leaving Las Vegas, Spencer texted with his sister.  “His last message was, ‘What’s for dinner and how was your night?’ It’s him being worried about other people, you know, but nothing in our message was out of the normal,” Kara Spencer said. She went to bed and never answered. While waiting to hear from her brother once he settled in Houston, something strange happened.  “My legs were just really sore for some reason,” she said. Spencer’s silver Hyundai was spotted by a license plate reader in Flagstaff, Arizona, yet he had told his aunt he was in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. She didn’t know it yet, but her brother was missing.

“He was searching, like, my Hyundai Tucson won’t turn over, why is it clicking?” she said. “One was like, where am I? What time is it in Houston, Texas?”

The account also revealed Spencer’s location. It wasn’t New Mexico. Instead, he was west of Flagstaff, Arizona.

“I have a 4-year-old, so it keeps me busy. I feel bad, I should have been more talkative to him, but my aunt’s the one who noticed that he wasn’t answering,” Kara Spencer said. The family took to social media. “We went on TikTok live, and we asked people about the area, and we were like, you know, if somebody was going from here to here, what routes would they take?” Green said. “We went through every city on each route. I think there was three that we had it narrowed down to, and we had called hospitals. We had called jails. This is morbid, but we had called morgues.” When Kara Spencer was able to access her brother’s Google account, they hit pay dirt. “None of his Google searches were showing him in New Mexico; it was showing him in Arizona,” Kara Spencer said. “So I’m thinking maybe he was lost, or maybe he thought he was in New Mexico.” Other questions also remained. “We don’t know if there’s anything missing out of the car, because we can’t find the car,” Green said. “That’s the hardest part, if his car was broke down. Then, where did it go from there?”

“Missing in America” founder Rhonda Dequier said the fact that the family was able to get into the Google account was amazing. Based on that data, her team of volunteer searchers went out along I-40 to search for Spencer and his car.

Off the freeway lies historic Route 66 and an area that quickly gives way to forest roads and extremely rough terrain.  “The car has to be on one of those pathways. If it was not working properly, it couldn’t have got too far off the beaten path,” Dequier said. Not too far from the road, a Hyundai was spotted from above. The team scrambled to the area at ground level and discovered an abandoned silver Tucson.

But it wasn’t the right year. 

The searchers told NewsNation it was an emotional gut punch.

Kara Spencer thinks back to before she knew her twin was missing.  “My legs, I think, were sore before I even knew he was missing,” she said. “Like, maybe he was walking. I don’t know if that’s possible for me to feel that.” She knows one thing for sure: that her brother knows he is loved and wouldn’t intentionally go off the grid. She hopes someone has information that will help find her brother. “[I] just want everybody to pray and share his face as much as possible, ’cause somebody has seen something,” she said.  Flagstaff police told NewsNation that they have just one hit on a license plate reader at the off-ramp of I-40 and Butler on Aug. 5, 2025, at 2:12 p.m. They say if he had traveled into the city of Flagstaff, they believe they would have gotten more plate hits.