A handwritten message in a high school yearbook has stayed with a Louisiana woman searching for her missing friend. Michelle Daniel remembers Tova Jaileau Barnett as a quiet girl with a distinctive laugh, someone she met while attending a small private school. In 2023, Daniel revisited an old yearbook inscription from Tova that ended with six words: “Don’t forget about your girl.”
It was a memory Daniel shared with BRProud while discussing her efforts to bring renewed attention to Tova’s disappearance. The 19-year-old vanished from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in December 2000, and investigators have never publicly established what happened to her.
According to information previously documented in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), Tova was last seen with her girlfriend on December 2, 2000. The record does not identify the woman or explain where they were together before Tova disappeared.
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