Kaboga-Miller's disappearance has baffled her family, who have described her as a woman who didn't like to drive and was mostly comfortable hanging out with her sisters at home or visiting relatives.

The search party will meet at 9 a.m. at the East Palo Alto Family YMCA, 550 Bell St. and will have a station set up in the parking lot facing University Avenue. The station will be open all day with maps and flyers for anyone who wants to join.

Kaboga-Miller left her Crescent Park home in her silver 2002 Mercedes-Benz CLK at about 9:15 a.m. and drove to the Country Time Market at 2200 University Ave. in East Palo Alto, where she was seen purchasing cigarettes on surveillance video . Since that time, no one has seen her and she has not communicated with her family, her son Njoroge Kaboga-Miller said.

Family and friends will hold a search party on Saturday to try to locate 66-year-old Wamaitha Kaboga-Miller, a Palo Alto woman who disappeared on Friday, Aug. 17 . They are asking for community volunteers to help find her.

Clovis Kaboga-Miller, left, and brother Njoroge Kaboga-Miller, right, hold up the missing flyers of their missing mother, Wamaitha Kaboga-Miller, which they are distributing and posting in Palo Alto and East Palo Alto in an effort to locate her. Photo by Veronica Weber.

Njoroge Kaboga-Miller stands in his parent's dining room surrounded by framed photos of his family and his mother Wamaitha Kaboga-Miller, who was last seen in East Palo Alto on Aug. 17, 2018. Photo by Veronica Weber.

A framed photo of Wamaitha Kaboga-Miller, with her husband, Kemp, and two sons, Njoroge and Clovis. Wamaitha was last seen on the morning of Aug. 17, 2018. Photo by Veronica Weber.

Njoroge Kaboga-Miller, left, and his brother Clovis Kaboga-Miller, sit in their parent's dining room after checking the details of a search event the family has planned for Saturday morning on Clovis' phone. Photo by Veronica Weber.

Kaboga-Miller did not take her cellphone, nor the walker she relies on to get around. She had a wallet, but she has not used her debit card. She doesn't drive after dark, and doesn't like to drive in general. For the most part, her husband drives her around or runs errands, her son said. When she did drive, it was close by to visit relatives in Menlo Park or East Palo Alto or to volunteer at the Palo Alto Food Closet located a few blocks away from her home.

"She had a fear of the bridge. LPR (license plate readers) didn't ping (the car at the toll plaza). There's no video or footage. She just vanished," he said.

The home's alarm system, which records the opening and closing of the door, showed that on Friday morning her husband, Kemp Kaboga-Miller, had exited the home to go to work. Shortly thereafter, she exited the house. Surveillance video at the Country Time Market showed Kaboga-Miller, who is disabled, hobbling her way into the store. She purchased two packages of cigarettes for $19, her son said. It took about 15 minutes to complete the purchase and return to her car, he said.

Just about everything Kaboga-Miller did after leaving her Crescent Park home shortly after 9:15 a.m. that day seems out of character for the mother of two grown sons, Njoroge Kaboga-Miller said.

Kaboga-Miller doesn't go anywhere in the evenings, he added. "She likes sitting and talking to her sisters and helping people in need," he said.

"It was strange that she left so quickly. ... She was last seen in her pajamas and wearing a back brace. She couldn't go anywhere without it. We fear that she's dead or hurt or has possibly driven somewhere without knowing where she is and that she's hungry. She can't walk if her car became disabled or she ran out of gas," he said.

Kaboga-Miller was recovering from back surgery and she can't walk any distance without her walker. She was taking oxycodone for pain from the surgery, which could impair her judgment, but her family saw no signs of depression from using the medicine, he said.

"She would never go to Country Time Market. There are too many unsavory people around the area and it is deep into East Palo Alto. She would go to downtown Palo Alto or to the 7-Eleven" if she wanted cigarettes, Njoroge Kaboga-Miller said.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Palo Alto police did not have any updates regarding her whereabouts. Anyone with information is asked to call the Palo Alto Police Department's 24-hour dispatch center at 650-329-2413.

Search organizers are asking that people come appropriately dressed for searching the baylands and marshy areas. They are asking for adult male volunteers in particular. They will also assign people to hand out flyers. For more information regarding the search, people may contact Wariara at 650-575-9054 and Lilia at 510-393-7734.

Palo Alto police have said they do not think Kaboga-Miller's disappearance is suspicious. She is described as a 5-foot, 1-inch tall black woman weighing about 120 pounds, according to a missing person flyer. She was last seen wearing a black puffy vest over white long-sleeved shirt and light-colored pajama pants.

The family has searched every place they could think of, from Sunnyvale to San Carlos. They have looked in dikes, in the baylands and the Palo Alto duck pond.

Kaboga-Miller's fortunes changed after she arrived in the Bay Area in the 1970s, living with uncles. She received a scholarship to attend San Jose State University, he said. Kaboga-Miller graduated with a major in communications and minor in business administration, according to her LinkedIn profile. She previously worked in purchasing at Broadcom in San Jose and other tech firms.

Meat was so precious that one time when they were dividing up the annual ration of goat, Kaboga-Miller wrapped her portion in a cloth and stored it in her pocket for later. As she worked around the farm, the meat fell out of the wrapping and into a pile of animal dung, her son said.

Growing up in a small Kenyan farming village, food was very scarce, he said. She grew up without any resources. They subsisted mainly on starches such as potatoes and corn, rarely had vegetables and ate meat only once a year, he said.

Family of missing woman to hold search party

'She just vanished,' says son of Wamaitha Kaboga-Miller