PHOTOS: Here are photos from memorial
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The memorial was placed by friends of Coker and Robin Chinn, a woman who has spent hours searching for the missing Riverside woman since she disappeared.
“I just felt like I wanted to do that. It shows compassion, and it shows that she is not going to be forgotten,” Robin Chinn said.
Coker went missing in October of 2018 after she dropped her teenage daughter off at school. The case officially has been treated as a homicide investigation for more than a year. Numerous searches by friends, family, neighbors, community volunteers and professional search firms had not uncovered her remains.
Riverside police had reported that Coker’s cell phone records show she made it back home after dropping off her daughter.
Her car was later seen in surveillance footage in the parking lot of the Kroger on Spinning Road. A person wearing all black got out of her car and walked away. The next night, Coker’s daughter used an app to find her mother’s car, phone and purse in that same shopping center parking lot near her house.
The area where Coker's remains were found is about a 15-minute drive from her house, authorities said. No evidence suggests that her body had been buried, investigators said.
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Chinn didn’t know Coker, but her case has made a large impact on her.
“This happened right down the street from my house, literally within two miles is her house and less than a mile is the Kroger store,” Chinn said. “This is one of our people. This is one of our community members. My grandchildren go to school behind the house there and this is one of us. It could have been anybody. I just felt compelled to help try to find her.”
“She was a very well-loved person and she is going to be missed,” Chinn said. “People all over the country who didn’t know her and want to have justice for her. Anybody deserves justice.”
Chinn said the discovery of Coker will hopefully give Coker’s mother and family some sort of closure.
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