Former UCLA student charged with kidnapping hoax

A 22-year-old Glendale woman and former UCLA student who made up a story about being kidnapped was criminally charged Friday.

The Merced County district attorney's office filed one count of filing a false police report against Nancy Salas, according to KTLA-TV Channel 5 News.

In the hours after Salas was reported missing -- after a supposed run up Chevy Chase Canyon on the morning of May 12 -- Glendale police assigned more than a dozen investigators to the case.

A 22-year-old Glendale woman and former UCLA student who made up a story about being kidnapped was criminally charged Friday.

The Merced County district attorney's office filed one count of filing a false police report against Nancy Salas, according to KTLA-TV Channel 5 News.

In the hours after Salas was reported missing -- after a supposed run up Chevy Chase Canyon on the morning of May 12 -- Glendale police assigned more than a dozen investigators to the case.

Many worked past midnight that day with her family, friends and church members as a massive search in Chevy Chase Canyon was carried out with a police helicopter, bloodhounds and other canines trained to sniff out dead bodies.

Detectives pored through phone records and social networking websites for potential clues. Others knocked on the doors of local registered sex offenders and parolees with violent pasts.

Salas was found unharmed on the afternoon of May 13 about 270 miles north in Merced after she entered a downtown carpet store and said she had been abducted.

But shortly before reuniting with her family in Glendale, Salas told investigators that she had made up the kidnapping story.

--Shelby Grad

Photo: Nancy Salas

Credit: Glendale Police Department

Detectives pored through phone records and social networking websites for potential clues. Others knocked on the doors of local registered sex offenders and parolees with violent pasts.