Billionaire tech heiress Mint Butterfield has been found by police after she went missing more than a week ago in San Francisco.
Butterfield, 16, is the only child of two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield and Flickr founder Caterina Fake.
The 16-year-old, who uses they/them pronouns, disappeared from his mother’s home in the affluent Bolinas neighborhood on April 21 before Fake reported him missing the next day.
On Saturday evening, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office said they located Butterfield safe in the California town after he was found with one of his adult friends.
Detectives say they learned that Butterfield was associated with one Christopher “Kio” Dizefalo, 26, who was known to drive a white pickup truck. After recovering the vehicle, officers found Butterfield inside.
Mint Butterfield, the 16-year-old child of billionaire tech CEO Stewart Butterfield, was found Saturday night
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, speaks at the 2010 Bloomberg BusinessWeek Media Summit in New York, Wednesday, March 10, 2010.
Stewart Butterfield speaks at his company’s Frontiers conference at Pier 27 and 29 on April 24, 2019 in San Francisco
In a statement, the Marin County Sheriff’s Office said Butterfield was found unharmed and that she voluntarily ran away from her home.
After Dizefalo was questioned by detectives, he was arrested and booked into the Marin County Jail, with bail set at $50,000.
Police said earlier in the week that Mint was “at risk” due to a previous suicide threat.
They said she left her mother’s home with a suitcase and left a note saying she had left the residence. Police believed she was in the Tenderloin neighborhood.
The troubled teen, who reportedly struggled with addiction issues in the past, attends a private boarding school in Napa Valley.
The Tenderloin is at the center of San Francisco’s fentanyl crisis and is known for its squalid conditions, homelessness, crime, drug trafficking and prostitution.
Mint’s father, Stewart Butterfield, is currently worth $1.6 billion. Slack was acquired by Salesforce in 2021 for $28 billion and Butterfield left the company in 2022.
Their mother is Caterina Fake, who started the Flickr imaging service with her then partner, Butterfield. They sold the image hosting website to Yahoo in 2005.
Christopher “Kio” Dizefalo, seen here, was arrested and booked into the Marin County Jail, with bail set at $50,000.
Butterfield has since married Jen Rubio, co-founder of Away, an American luggage and travel accessories brand, and the couple have two young children.
In 2021, Butterfield purchased a $31.7 million mansion in Aspen, Colorado. The residence sits on a five-acre estate overlooking the Castle Creek Valley.
Stewart Butterfield’s $19 million San Francisco home, located in the upscale Presidio Heights neighborhood
Since then, Fake has served on the boards of several startups and is known as an angel investor in the tech world.
Fake and Butterfield married in 2001 and remained together until 2007 when their child was born.
Butterfield has since married Jen Rubio, co-founder of Away, an American luggage and travel accessories brand, and the couple have two young children together.
Fake is now in a relationship with Jaiku co-founder Jyri Engestrom, and the couple shares three children.
In 2021, Butterfield purchased a $31.7 million mansion in Aspen, Colorado. The residence sits on a five-acre estate overlooking the Castle Creek Valley.
The property features a generous home gym, home theater, games room, 500-bottle wine cellar, tasting room, six en-suite bedrooms private and a garage for three cars.
Butterfield also owns a $19 million home in San Francisco, which has seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms and is located in the upscale Presidio Heights neighborhood.
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