It is unlike her, friends say, to miss work, skip her doctor’s appointments and fail to share her plans if she were taking a trip.

But that is exactly what has happened with Karla Kral, 66, a Kapahulu woman who disappeared March 28.

Her family members and friends express bafflement at the abrupt loss of communication, which they say is unusual.

“She emotes,” said sister Barb Jakubowski, who lives in Oregon and maintains a close relationship. “She’s verbal. This is out of character.”

One longtime friend said Kral, who is single, told her she had met a man at a meditation group and went out with him one evening in early to mid-March. The venue: a cemetery.

The friend, who asked not to be named, found it odd and teased Kral about going on a date to a cemetery. That friend said she regrets not asking more questions.

“She hasn’t dated in years,” said close friend Kayla Rosenfeld. “That’s why it raised a red flag.”

That piece of information was turned over to a police detective last week, she said.

Rosenfeld says Kral is a giving person, caring, is an elder caretaker and will go out of her way to help others. She said somebody might have taken advantage of her.

Curiously, two credit cards arrived at Kral’s home by overnight express delivery shortly after she disappeared, she said. She said that all her assets have since been frozen.

Honolulu police are investigating the disappearance as a missing-person case. Sgt. Kim Buffett, CrimeStoppers coordinator, said last week that police had not received any leads since a bulletin was issued April 7. Kral was last seen in the early morning hours of March 28 at her Castle Street home.

Kral moved to Hawaii in 1975 from Oak Park, Ill., Jakubowski said. She has found in Hawaii a vast community of friends and has many more friends on the mainland.

But Jakubowski said her sister seems to have compartmentalized her friends more than other people.

Rosenfeld said, “She’s got a huge community, little separate pockets of friends. … Everyone who knew her has come together to share pieces of the puzzle in order to find her.”

Tom Davidson-Marx, leader of a meditation group she attends, and his wife, Katina Marx, say Kral is a hanai member of their family and an “auntie” to their children. Marx said they are worried about her and say the key to finding her may be her 2014 silver Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen, also missing.

Kral works as a caregiver for senior patients in their homes, with her own clients, and also has been working for the last 20 years as an independent contractor for Elder Care Resources as a caregiver and part-time office worker.

Owner Sue Cornish said Kral last came to work March 27.

“She did seem quieter recently,” Cornish said.” She was coming in in the morning, and I was going out. There was nothing that was said at that time.”

She didn’t realize anything was amiss until she got a call April 2 from Kral’s landlord. When Cornish called a client to see whether Kral had worked on March 30 and 31, she learned Kral “never showed up.”

It was unlike her not to call, she said.

“She was a wonderful caregiver, a wonderful companion,” Cornish said. “She would do all sorts of things: drive them to different places, do their nails, read the paper, make a photo album. She was a very creative lady, very smart, very articulate, very caring.”

A neighbor said she last saw her car March 27 but heard it the morning of March 28.

Friend Michael Zucker has searched for her car at the airport parking garage, a meditation center property at Poamoho near Waialua, the Palolo Zen Center and the nearby Kaau Crater trailhead, but found nothing.

Kral is Caucasian, 5 feet 5 inches tall, 120 pounds, with brown hair and hazel eyes, and requires daily medication. Her license plate is SCY 946.

Anyone with information is asked to call CrimeStoppers at 955-8300 or *CRIME on a cellphone.