Setting the record straight! After being eliminated from The Bachelor on Monday, February 12, Bekah Martinez called into Jimmy Kimmel Live! and finally explained why she was recently reported missing.
“I just decided to go to the mountains with my friends for a couple weeks [after filming The Bachelor] and I was there for six or seven days without phone service, which I thought I was going to have phone service and I told my mother that I would,” the 23-year-old nanny explained.
“I just had this weird feeling on the sixth or seventh day. ‘I need to go home now,’” she recalled thinking. “So, I got in my car, drove to where I had service, called my parents and then come to find out [that] only 12 hours before, my mother had called the Humboldt Sheriff’s Department saying that I was missing.”
As previously reported, Martinez was removed from a missing persons list earlier this month after a fan of the ABC reality dating series recognized her from Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s season and contacted the police. The reality star had been reported missing after her mother told authorities in November that she hadn’t heard from her daughter, who apparently said she was working at a local marijuana farm. Martinez joked about the debacle on Twitter, writing, “MOM. how many times do I have to tell you I don’t get cell service on The Bachelor??”
Clarifying any confusion, Martinez told Jimmy Kimmel, “I’m not a weed farmer. I’m still a nanny in L.A.”
The season 22 contestant also said on the ABC late-night show that she signed up for The Bachelor because she “was hoping” that Bachelorette alum Peter Kraus would be the lead. Still, she enjoyed the experience and has come to terms with not finding love. Martinez explained, “I’m hanging in there. … I’m picking up the pieces as I go along.”
The Bachelor airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET.
