Northridge Soccer Recruit Missing After Coming to L.A.

One of the top three recruits for the Cal State Northridge women’s soccer team has apparently vanished since arriving Sunday at Los Angeles International Airport, university officials and the 23-year-old woman’s mother said Thursday.

A missing person’s report was filed with Los Angeles police Thursday after Nikki Thomas, a native of suburban Toronto, twice failed to appear at preseason activities, alarming both her mother, Carol Thomas, and soccer coach Brian Wiesner.

“I’m waiting for the kid to call,” Carol Thomas said from her home in Mississauga, Canada, after her daughter missed the first day of preseason practice. “I honestly believed she would walk on the bloody field. When [Wiesner] called and said she was a no-show, it was like air going out of a tire.”

Thomas left a phone message Sunday for her mother, saying she had arrived in Los Angeles and had been sightseeing. Carol Thomas, who did not hear the message until Monday, said she has not heard from her daughter since.

Last year, the goalkeeper from the University of Detroit-Mercy had sought out Cal State Northridge for her senior year after using three of her four years of athletic eligibility. The 5-foot, 9-inch, 155-pound athlete was signed to a full scholarship by Wiesner, sight unseen, this year.

Thomas’ last contact with Northridge was a phone conversation with Wiesner about two weeks ago, when she confirmed that she would be starting in the fall and arriving in time for preseason training.

Wiesner said he had expected another call from Thomas detailing her flight plans but did not hear back from the player and assumed that she would report Monday for the team’s scheduled physical exams.

But Thomas missed the physicals and the first day of preseason practice Thursday.

Northridge Athletic Director Paul Bubb said university officials do not pick up incoming athletes and that he is satisfied Wiesner “acted in a timely and reasonable manner” regarding Thomas’ disappearance. Wiesner contacted Carol Thomas twice Tuesday after giving her daughter all day Monday to appear, Bubb said. Wiesner said he also alerted university officials and contacted LAX police.

“She’s an older student athlete, but that doesn’t ease our concerns any,” Bubb said.

Thomas’ mother--whose call to Canadian police early Wednesday generated Thursday’s missing person’s report--said she did not hold Northridge responsible.

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“She’s 23. We’re not talking about a kid who’s 18 and leaving home for the first time,” Carol Thomas said. “If she didn’t apprise Brian [Wiesner] of her travel arrangements, how could anybody be responsible for her arrival?”

Carol Thomas, a manager for an accounting firm, said she requested Wednesday that her phone company trace the origin of her daughter’s Sunday call to her answering machine. Thursday, the trace revealed that Nikki had called from Van Nuys.

Carol Thomas also checked a bank account she holds jointly with her daughter and discovered that $120 had been withdrawn Tuesday from an automated teller machine at St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Burbank. The name Nikki Thomas did not appear on any computerized lists at the hospital, Carol Thomas said Thursday.

Nikki Thomas boarded a nonstop Air Canada flight to Los Angeles on Sunday in Toronto carrying more than $600 in cash and traveler’s checks, her mother said.

Nikki Thomas, who has bobbed brown hair and brown eyes, recently graduated from Detroit-Mercy, where she had played goalie for four years on the women’s soccer team.

Because she was injured as a sophomore, Thomas retained one year of athletic eligibility, and last year she sought out Northridge, where she had been accepted as a graduate student in history, Wiesner and Carol Thomas said.

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Asked if anything in her daughter’s past or personality would explain her disappearance, Carol Thomas said Nikki had an infatuation with “everything about Hollywood.”

A devoted fan of talk show host Rosie O’Donnell, Nikki Thomas had stacks of movie videotapes in her room in Canada, Carol Thomas said.

Wiesner, who signed Thomas to a letter of intent for a full athletic scholarship last winter, said he had talked to Thomas 10 to 15 times since she first contacted him.

Now, he would like to hear from her one more time.

“You hope it’s a situation where a young person is acting a little irresponsibly, but it’s become pretty troublesome,” Wiesner said. “We hope that by talking about it and erring on the side of safety we can get out as much information as possible.”

Times staff writer Martha Willman contributed to this story.