The body of a young woman was found in the deserts of Southern Arizona in 2008, but no one could confirm who she was. Seventeen years later — longer than she was alive — investigators identified her remains with the help of social media, with her surviving family members finally learning her fate.

In the heat of the summer of 2008, 16-year-old Maria Eluvia Mendez Morales — known as Eluvia — from San Marcos, Guatemala, was about 10 miles from Sells in the desert of the Tohono O’Odham Nation when she died. She was found on a dirt road almost two and a half miles south of the highway near the town of Haivana Nakya, population 94.

Eluvia’s autopsy says she most likely died from overheating. She stood at just 4'9" and weighed 92 pounds, and was wearing a pair of blue jeans with studs on the b

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