What happened to Bianca Carrasco? Preview Dateline: Missing In America Season 5

On May 1, 2016, Bianca Carrasco, a 29-year-old oncology nurse at Topperwine Medical Center near San Antonio, Texas, did not show up for her shift. Her sister, Giovanna Bernie, recalls the moment she knew something was deeply wrong: “She said no ma'am. And she said it's not like her. From that point, I said, okay, something's really wrong.” It has been ten years, and Bianca has not been seen since.

This episode of Dateline: Missing In America opens its fifth season with Bianca’s story, framing her disappearance as a mystery that has defied resolution. The narrative hook is not a dramatic crime scene but a quiet, devastating absence: a nurse who loved her patients and took her work “very seriously” simply vanished from a life built on routine and responsibility. The episode uses Bianca’s profession to establish the stakes. Nurses, the narrator explains, are “the beating heart” of the health care system—the people who spend the most time with patients, who take medical histories, check vitals, administer medications, and dry tears. The job is “emotionally demanding and physically taxing,” and the only constant is that a nurse is expected to show up, ready to work, every day. Bianca did exactly that, shift after shift, until she didn’t.