Case snapshot
Tera Lynn Smith was 16 when she disappeared from Redding, California, on August 22, 1998. She was a student at Central Valley High School, where she had been a homecoming princess and participated in cross country and basketball. She lived with her parents, Terry and Marilyn Smith, and her three younger siblings. The family owned the Oasis Fun Center in nearby Shasta Lake, where Tera also worked.
Tera left her family’s home on Tarcy Way that Saturday evening dressed to go jogging. She was supposed to report to work at the Oasis Fun Center at 7:00 p.m., but she never arrived. Her family reported her missing within hours. She has not been seen since.
The last evening
Tera had spent part of August 22 with her mother before returning to the family’s home northeast of Redding. She was grounded at the time, but she left the house wearing running clothes and told her younger sister that she was going for a jog. Her mother later told the Record Searchlight that Tera had been in a good mood and was looking forward to returning to school the following Monday.
When Tera failed to appear for her 7:00 p.m. shift at the family’s business, her parents became concerned. They did not believe she had deliberately run away. In the days that followed, people who knew Tera described her as dependable and said abruptly disappearing without contacting her family was out of character.
Investigators soon learned that Tera had been with someone that evening. A 29-year-old man named Troy Zink, who had been her martial arts instructor, acknowledged that he had given her a ride.
The last known encounter
Zink told investigators that Tera had contacted him at work and arranged to meet him. According to the account he gave authorities, Tera asked him for $2,000. He said he refused, after which she became upset and asked him to take her to the intersection of Old Alturas Road and Old Oregon Trail.
Zink maintained that he dropped Tera off there alive. According to later reporting on the case, he said he then drove alone to the Shasta Dam area before eventually returning home. Tera has never been reliably seen since the evening of August 22.
Her family questioned Zink’s account. After Tera disappeared, her parents said they discovered letters and journal entries that led them to believe their daughter had been involved in an inappropriate relationship with the much older instructor. They came to believe that Tera may have arranged to see him that evening because she wanted to end the relationship.
Zink denied having a sexual relationship with Tera and denied harming her.
A person investigators wanted to understand
Zink’s background quickly became relevant to the investigation. Authorities learned that he had pleaded guilty to rape several years before Tera disappeared. Contemporary reporting also described investigators as interested in him, although law enforcement stopped short of publicly naming him a suspect in Tera’s disappearance.
The case presented a fundamental problem. Investigators could scrutinize Zink’s account and examine his background, but they still needed evidence showing what had happened to Tera. No remains had been recovered, there was no publicly established crime scene, and investigators did not have sufficient evidence to charge anyone with causing her disappearance.
Zink was interviewed by sheriff’s deputies early in the investigation. He later declined further questioning. He has never been charged in connection with Tera’s disappearance.
The search
The search for Tera began almost immediately. Sheriff’s deputies, Redding police and FBI agents followed leads, interviewed people who knew her and searched locations associated with the teenager. Tracking dogs were also used in an effort to find her. Teachers and students at Central Valley High School distributed missing-person flyers and encouraged anyone who knew something to contact investigators.
The investigation continued long after the initial searches ended. By August 2008, Shasta County Sheriff’s Sgt. John Hubbard told the Record Searchlight that investigators had followed “hundreds and hundreds” of tips during the decade since Tera disappeared. Even ten years later, detectives were still receiving and investigating new information.
One tip that year sent investigators to the Shingletown area after Tera’s father learned that construction workers had encountered what appeared to be a grave. Authorities examined the location, but what had been buried there turned out to be a canvas tent and assorted trash.
It was another lead that produced no answer.
What her family believes
Tera’s family has long believed she did not voluntarily disappear. As the years passed without contact from her, her parents also came to believe that she was dead.
They have publicly expressed suspicions about Zink and have said they believe the writings they found after Tera disappeared help explain why she met him that evening. Those are the family’s conclusions, however, not findings established in court. Zink has denied involvement, and law enforcement has never charged him with harming Tera.
That distinction remains important. The circumstances surrounding Tera’s disappearance have generated suspicion for decades, but suspicion alone cannot establish what happened after she left home. Without her remains or enough physical, forensic or other evidence to establish a crime and connect someone to it, the case has never resulted in a prosecution.
A case that never went away
Tera’s disappearance remained well known in the Redding area as the years passed. Her family continued seeking information, while investigators periodically revisited leads and followed new tips. A reward of up to $20,000 has been offered for information leading to her location.
The case also continued to receive media attention outside Northern California. In 2022, Dateline revisited Tera’s disappearance and spoke with members of her family. Her parents again said they believed their daughter was dead but continued to hope the case would eventually be solved.
For the Smith family, finding Tera and establishing what happened to her have remained separate from the question of whether anyone could ultimately be prosecuted. Even after decades without an arrest, they have continued asking anyone with information to come forward.
The evidence that remains
The California Department of Justice still lists Tera as a missing person. Its record states that she was 5 feet 7 inches tall and approximately 120 pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes. She was wearing a white sports bra, multicolored running shorts and white-and-navy Nike running shoes when she disappeared.
Dental X-rays are available for comparison if unidentified remains are recovered. The state has also published an age-progressed image supplied by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children showing what Tera might have looked like as she grew older.
Those records remain important because there has never been a confirmed recovery of Tera’s remains. Until she is found, even the most basic question in the case remains unresolved.
More than two decades without Tera
By the tenth anniversary of Tera’s disappearance, her three younger siblings had grown up, married and begun building families of their own. Terry and Marilyn Smith had continued living with a kind of uncertainty that rarely produces a clean ending.
Terry told the Record Searchlight in 2008 that one of the most painful changes was realizing that his memories of Tera were beginning to fade. He sometimes struggled to remember details as basic as his daughter’s voice and smile. The passage of time had made the immediate grief less sharp, but it had not answered the question that had followed the family since 1998.
The known timeline remains remarkably short. Tera left her family’s home on August 22. She was expected at work that evening but never arrived. A 29-year-old acquaintance acknowledged being with her and said he dropped her off alive at an intersection. No confirmed sighting has placed Tera anywhere after that encounter.
The California Department of Justice continues to list her as missing, and the Shasta County Sheriff’s Department remains the investigating agency. More than two decades later, no one has been charged in connection with her disappearance, and Tera has never been found.
Where to dive deeper
- Official case record: California Department of Justice, Missing Persons, Tera Lynn Smith
- Local reporting: Redding Record Searchlight, “10 Years Without Tera” by Jim Schultz
- Contemporary coverage: Redding Record Searchlight reporting from August 1998 on the search for Tera
- Television and long-form coverage: NBC Dateline, “Missing in America: Tera Smith”
- Missing-person resources: National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
