AGOURA HILLS, Calif. — Zoë Kustritz had it down to a kind of sales pitch. She recited the same speech to everyone she came upon as she walked up and down Malibu Pier on a sunny day.

“My brother is missing,” said Kustritz. “He’s six feet tall, has red hair.”

Then she would show each person a picture of her younger brother, Jack Stein, on her cell phone.

“Does he look familiar?” asked Kustritz.

She did this over and over, to everyone she encountered, beginning her pitch, as always, with, “My brother is missing…”

But Zoë Kustritz wasn’t selling anything. In fact, she was giving something away.

“Can I give you a sticker?” asked Kustritz, as she handed it off to a man who was fishing off the side of the pier. “It’s just to remind you. Maybe you can tell your friends?”

The bright orange sticker read, simply, “Was Jack Here?” The design was lifted from her brother’s sketch book.

As she continued down the pier, Kustritz placed the stickers on the pier’s railing and on trash can lids.

If Kustritz wasn’t selling anything, then she also wasn’t buying any notion that she won’t find her lost brother, younger than her by two years. They grew up together in Minnesota. After college, Stein moved to the Los Angeles area, and was known to hang out on Malibu’s beaches and in local surf shops.

Next, she canvassed a local beach, offering stickers to sunbathers.

“Have you seen him,” said Kustritz, putting her cell phone in front of a woman lounging on a beach towel.

With stickers in hand, Kustritz bounced into a Malibu surf shop where her brother used to work.

“He went missing July 13th,” Kustritz told an employee.

On that day in, 2021, search dogs lost Stein’s scent at a trailhead beneath Ladyface Mountain along Kanan Road in Agoura Hills. Kustritz said her 24-year-old brother was going through a mental health crisis and was staying at a nearby luxury treatment center. Kustritz said her brother was diagnosed with a bipolar disorder.

Also on that July day, Kustritz and her mother had traveled from out of state to visit Stein. Stein’s mother had traveled from Minnesota. Kustritz had flown in from where she lives in Boston.

Kustritz said her brother seemed well when they left him that evening. She and her mother went to a nearby restaurant to have dinner and prepared to fly home.

While eating dinner, about an hour after they left Jack, Kustritz got a phone call from the treatment center. Stein was missing. Kustritz and her mother rushed back to the treatment center.

Kustritz said his house mates at the center told her Stein was acting odd before he went missing.

“One of the (house mates) said, ‘Oh, he really wanted to play chess. And he brought out the chess board, and we were setting up to play,’” recalled Kustritz. ‘“And all of a sudden, he looked up and got this look on his face like he had seen a ghost.’”

The house mates reported that Stein then laced up his shoes and walked out the door.

And no one has seen him since.

“He vanished,” said Kustritz.

Shortly after his disappearance, Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies began an all-out search for Stein. Two different agencies conducted three helicopter searches during the night and into the following morning. Except for his scent at the Kanan Road trailhead, they didn’t find any trace of Stein.

“I mean, it’s bewildering,” said Kustritz. She also said his disappearance baffled authorities, given how they had conducted a wide search and not long after Stein was reported missing.

What is more baffling, said Kustritz, is that, on the surface, everything seemed to be going well for her brother. Stein had recently graduated from the University of Minnesota and was looking forward to a new corporate job that he had recently accepted.

Kustritz said Stein is naturally athletic, tall and handsome.

“He’s incredibly charming,” said Kustritz. “He just loves the thrill and adrenaline of being outside."

According to Kustritz, despite being from Minnesota, her brother was able to master surfing quickly. He even gave surf lessons.

Kustritz said she believes her brother’s athletic prowess and charming exterior may have belied the depths of his mental illness. Kustritz wondered if her brother would not have gone missing had he been diagnosed and treated sooner.

“It was incredibly difficult to get the help that we needed,” said Kustritz. "Jack's mental health crisis was pretty extended, and if we were able to intervene earlier, he might not be missing now." 

But Kustritz is also baffled that she had to go this far — literally and figuratively — to spread the word about her brother’s disappearance. Her brother hasn’t garnered a lot of media attention. And she said it has everything to do with his gender.

“It’s often a lot more difficult to get attention as a (missing) man than a woman,” said Kustritz.

According to the most recent crime statistics, far more adult males than females go missing nationally, and, in California. In 2020, the National Crime Information Center reported 95,096 males over the age of 21 went missing in the United States. In that same year, 59,369 adult females when missing nationally. The same year Stein went missing, the California Department of Justice reported 24,931 adult males went missing versus 16,553 adult females.

Both, nationally and in California, approximately 60% of the adults who go missing are male.

However, sociologists and criminologists say men like Stein also go missing in the headlines. Media coverage of missing persons skews toward missing females, says criminologist Dr. Michelle Jeanis of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, who has studied how media reports missing persons.

“Nearly every study that I see, “ said Jeanis, “(shows) that women receive more traditional media coverage than men.” This is despite the fact that many more males go missing than females.

Jeanis says social scientists call it “missing white woman syndrome,” as exemplified by the massive media coverage of Gabby Petito, who disappeared a month after Jack. And unbalanced media coverage may be tied to sexism, said Jeanis. She said it may be due to society’s perception that strong males like Stein “can take care of themselves.”

“I think it might fall back into a ‘chivalry’ hypothesis,” said Jeanis. “(It’s) the belief we have to protect women. And we don’t need to protect men.”

Recently, Kustritz flew back to LA to bring attention to her brother’s disappearance, and to “sticker” the areas Stein was known to frequent.

This is the first time she is seeing a billboard her family leased in Venice. It’s a picture of Stein in a collared shirt and tie next to text that reads, “Missing Jack Stein,” and a number to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Kustritz dissolved into tears.

“I just have this urge to go touch the billboard,” said Kustritz, as she stared up at the huge sign. She plastered a nearby utility box with some stickers before heading off to a nearby homeless encampment. She went from tent to tent, reciting the same speech.

“My brother is missing,” she began. “He’s six feet tall, has red hair.”