Wei Ho ’09 found safe in San Francisco

Ho was found by the San Francisco Police Department, whom Public Safety contacted after its investigation revealed that Ho was in the San Francisco area, according to the alert.

"There was no foul play involved in this case and Ho's parents are now with him in San Francisco," the alert explained.

The computer science concentrator from Chamblee, Ga., was located around noon Tuesday, Public Safety director Steven Healy said.

Ho did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Public Safety had originally issued an alert on Saturday requesting information on Ho's whereabouts from the campus community. While Public Safety has previously conducted missing persons investigations, issuing a campus-wide alert was unusual, University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt '96 said in an interview on Sunday.

"We deal with folks who are concerned about their friends', family members' and colleagues' and peers' [whereabouts] all the time," Healy said. "Usually the person contacts the folks who are concerned about them after a certain amount of time."

"One of the things that was different about this case was a prolonged time of no contact with his family members," he explained.

Healy said that Ho's whereabouts were tracked by various means, though he declined to discuss specifically how the missing student was located.

"It was good investigative work," he said, adding that members of his department as well as other University administrators were involved in locating Ho.

While the original alert expressed concern for Ho's safety, Ho traveled to San Francisco of his own will and was found unharmed, Healy said.

"[We are] very pleased and relieved that we have found out where he is and that he has been reunited with the folks who care about him most," Healy added.

Before Ho's whereabouts were discovered, some of his friends, including roommate Daniel Douglas '09, said that they believed his disappearance was a choice.

Get the best of the ‘Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

Andrew Yang '09, a friend of Ho's who said he "used to hang out with him a lot during freshman year," said that he thinks perhaps Ho "needed some time off from school just to think."

"I can totally understand how at Princeton, one can get really absorbed in studies. Especially if you spend a lot of time by yourself doing work, it can really get to you and be very overwhelming," Yang said, describing Ho as very "academically motivated."

Ho was a recipient of the Freshman First Honor Prize and the Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence. According to his facebook.com profile, Ho spent last summer interning with Microsoft.

The University admissions website features Ho's profile, which emphasizes his passion for the sciences.