Cup of Wawa coffee, video footage are last traces of N.J. woman missing for 5 months

The last time Sue Quackenbush spoke to her adult daughter by phone, Danielle Lopez was in a great mood. She was camping in the Pine Barrens with her boyfriend and seemed content, Quackenbush said.

"We just spoke for a while and I told her I loved her," Lopez's mother said.

That conversation was five months ago and Quackenbush hasn't heard from her daughter since.

She knows Lopez bought a coffee at a Wawa on Route 72 in Burlington County the following day. A store surveillance image of the 37-year-old Willingboro woman shows her smiling as she left with her coffee on the morning of April 13.

New Jersey State Police conducted several large-scale searches for Lopez in the area and announced a missing person investigation into her disappearance in May .

While they've interviewed several people in connection with the case, "there are no suspects at this time," police said this week.

They also revealed this week that Lopez was seen on video captured by a motorist's GoPro camera hours after the coffee purchase while she was walking along a dirt road in Penn State Forest in Woodland, several miles from the Wawa.

After that, her trail goes cold.

Family and police are hoping someone can provide crucial information that could solve the mystery and bring Lopez home.

Quackenbush described her daughter, one of her three children, as an outgoing and happy person.

"Danielle was very kind, always thinking of someone else. Loved her family," she said. "She was bubbly, loved singing karaoke."

Quackenbush says she last spoke to her on the evening of April 12. Lopez said she was camping in the Brendan T. Byrne State Forest, which stretches across Burlington and Ocean counties. She said she was with her boyfriend. The couple had been together about seven years.

"She was camping with someone she trusted. She seemed content," her mother said. "She said she was warm. She had a propane heater. After that, every day I tried to reach her and I wasn't able to."

Quackenbush called police April 24 to report her daughter's disappearance.

Lopez's phone has not been found and there's been no activity with her bank accounts, her mother said.

One of the last images of her daughter was found thanks to the Wawa coffee purchase.

Quackenbush and her daughter share a Wawa card via the store's app. Her mother noticed Lopez bought a cup of coffee with their Wawa account the day after they spoke for the final time.

Based on that information, police retrieved surveillance camera footage of Lopez at the Wawa on Route 72 in the Vincentown section of Southampton in Burlington County, a few miles from her campsite. Lopez left the Wawa shortly after 9 a.m. on April 13.

She was with someone at the Wawa, her mother said. But, investigators have not told her the companion's identity.

Police found her disabled car, a two-door blue Hyundai Accent, on May 1 about 12 miles from the campground on Lost Lane in Penn State Forest.

The car had been there since the evening of April 13, the day Lopez was seen at Wawa, Quackenbush said. The vehicle had been stuck and pulled from a muddy spot onto flat ground by good Samaritans. They left the car along the road.

The boyfriend Lopez was camping with was interviewed by police about her disappearance, police said.

He said he last saw her on the morning of April 13, according to police. The boyfriend is currently in state prison on a matter unrelated to the missing person case.

Multiple people who were around Lopez in the days before she disappeared, including her companion at the Wawa, were also interviewed, authorities said.

Police revealed this week that a couple spotted Lopez while driving on Lost Lane in Penn State Forest in Woodland in southern Burlington County around 6 p.m. on April 13. She was walking alone on the road. They spoke briefly to her before driving off, and then the couple spotted her car stuck in a large puddle, police said.

The interaction was captured on the couple's GoPro video camera and they shared the footage with police.

Those images have not been released to the public by police.

The GoPro was mounted on the dashboard of the couple's vehicle and showed they captured video of Lopez twice that evening, according to Quackenbush. They first saw Lopez while she was driving and apparently alone, then later as she was walking, presumably after the car got stuck in the mud.

Lopez didn't ask the couple for help as she was walking, her mother said.

"She was lucid, she was coherent. She seemed OK. She did not seem in distress, leading me to believe she had contacted someone who was coming," Quackenbush said. "She had her phone in her hand, but I don't know if she had cell service."

Lopez had changed her clothes from what she was wearing in the Wawa image from that morning, according to the video. The clothing she wore in the store was found in the car along with other personal items, Quackenbush said.

Police said she was last seen wearing a black, long-sleeved shirt, blue jeans and light-colored shoes in the GoPro video.

While her daughter is a generally upbeat person, she's suffered through a series of tragedies in the last decade, according to her mother.

"Danielle has struggled since the loss of her two brothers," Quackenbush said. "Shortly after that, she lost her father and grandfather."

Quackenbush's oldest son, Eric, died by suicide on Christmas Day in 2015. Her son Michael died 10 months later in an auto accident in Florida, Quackenbush said, her voice cracking with emotion as she spoke about the loss. He had just returned from serving with the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan.

Her daughter's beloved dog also died about a month before her disappearance.

"The girl suffered so much loss," Quackenbush said.

Though she fears the worst about what could have happened to her lone surviving child, Quackenbush remains hopeful that she will return home.

"I have a yellow ribbon tied on a tree outside. That's an old song," Quackenbush said. "She would know what that would mean if she was to come back."

Quackenbush, who lives in Pennsylvania, has traveled the area where her daughter lived and where she was last seen. "I was down there putting flyers up everywhere I could, just getting the awareness out there," she said.

Police haven't told her much about what they've learned, but she said she's putting her trust in investigators to solve the mystery.

"They cannot tell me an awful lot about it, which is frustrating, but I get it," Quackenbush said. "They cannot tell me everything that they're doing."

While police initially said in May that Lopez told family she was planning to camp in the Wharton State Forest, located a short distance from the Byrne State Forest, Quackenbush called that a misunderstanding and said her daughter never mentioned planning to visit Wharton.

Uncertainty over her daughter's fate has taken a toll, the worried mother said.

"It's pretty hard to cope," she said.

She believes the police are doing everything they can to find her daughter, she said. "I have to trust the process right now."

Lopez is described as white, 5 feet 4 inches tall, 135 pounds, with brown eyes and brown hair. Anyone with information about her is asked to call New Jersey State Police at 609-882-2000, ext. 2554 or email .

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