‘Bachelor’ alum Bekah Martinez finally tells the whole story about the time she was reported missing
Bekah Martinez, of The Bachelorfame, is telling the whole, unfiltered saga of how she once appeared on a missing persons list.
While telling a story about once hitting a bear with her car, she noted that the accident took place in 2017 right after filming the reality show — during Arie Luyendyk Jr.'s season — when she was driving to a marijuana farm. She went there to work for some quick money, having had to quit her nanny job to film the show, and needed to cover her rent. While there, off the grid, the California native was infamously reported missing by her parents.
"Basically to make a VERY long story short, I was broke after The Bachelor," she wrote on her Instagram stories on Tuesday. "I needed to make some quick cash, so I went with a new friend to work on a weed farm trimming for a few weeks" in Humboldt County. "And, yes, this was the time my family thought I was missing."
Martinez shared a "missing" poster and explained that the girl she was with got kicked off the farm. She wanted Martinez to leave as well, but she said no, and she became angry.
She had been using the girl's phone "to stay in contact with my parents" because it was the only phone that had reception. However, when the girl left, obviously angry with her, she texted Martinez's mom to say she was "being held hostage [with] meth heads with knives and then stopped replying."
Martinez — who called the weed farm "sketch" but said there were no people with "meth addictions + knives" — says her parents were "traumatized" when they couldn't get in touch with her. She shared a message from her father that he was going to fly to Humboldt and "go all Liam Neeson on the weed farmers."
She said her parents filed a missing person report. Coincidentally, the morning after they did that, she woke up with a weird feeling and decided to leave the farm. She hadn't even been paid yet (though later was) and just split. She called her parents from the road once she had service and "got and earful."
They called the Humboldt County Sheriff more than once to report she had been found, but nobody answered and they just left voicemails. At that point, she said they "dumbly" assumed she was take off the list "because we never heard back."
Fast-forward a few months: The Bachelor debuted in early 2018 and around that time an article ran about the high number of missing persons cases in Humboldt County. Martinez's image was included in the story — and was spotted by a viewer of the ABC franchise.
She said the story "BLEW UP — like seriously blew up" and it was covered around the globe. However, she said the facts were "f**ked up. Some people thought 'Bekah M.,'" as she was known on the show, "lied to my mom and told her I was on a weed farm when I was really on The Bachelor."
Martinez sarcastically said that her favorite part about it was that her driver's license photo from when she was 15 was "plastered all over every news article."
She wrote about appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Liveafter being eliminated from The Bachelor — and said she told a watered-down version of the story because it was so "long and confusing."
"I just told all media outlets that I had to go to my friend's weed farm to 'get away and relax' after filming The Bachelor and I didn't have service and so my mom thought I was missing. So a lot of people thought I was an asshole for that," she wrote.
Martinez concluded by saying, "I'm grateful I"m alive and not missing," and "I'm sorry that my parents had to endure that horrible 24 hours."
She added, "And I definitely never talked to that girl again."
Martinez later appeared on Bachelor in Paradise but has been in a relationship with Grayston Leonard since early 2018. They are parents to a son and daughter.
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