Tech billionaires slam ‘predator who used the allure of drugs to groom’ their teenage daughter Mint Butterfield who went missing in San Francisco for a week before being found in a white van

The billionaire parents of Mint Butterfield, 16, have lashed out at the ‘predator’ who allegedly coaxed their daughter into disappearing in San Francisco last week.

Butterfield, who was found by police on Saturday evening, is the only daughter of two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield and Flickr founder Caterina Fake.

In an email to the press, Butterfield and Fake condemned 26-year-old Christopher ‘Kio’ Dizefalo, the parking valet who has been charged with abducting their daughter.

The parents wrote: ‘We especially want to thank the seasoned law enforcement officers who understand the very real threat of predators who use the allure of drugs to groom teenagers.’

Mint, who uses they/them pronouns, is reported to have battled addiction issues in the past. 

The 16-year-old vanished from their mother’s home in affluent Bolinas, California, on April 21, before Fake reported them missing the following day.

On Saturday evening, Marin County Sheriff’s Office said they had located Butterfield  safe in the California city after being found with an ‘adult friend’ of hers.  Detectives say they learned Butterfield was associating with Dizefalo.

After tracking down his white van, officers found Butterfield inside with Dizefalo on Eddy Street, in the city’s crime-ridden Tenderloin District. 

In a statement, Marin County Sheriff’s Office said Butterfield was found uninjured and said she had run away from home voluntarily.  

After Dizefalo was interviewed by detectives, he was arrested and booked in the Marin County Jail, with bail set at $50,000. 

Authorities said Dizefalo and Mint were in a ‘quasi-relationship,’ according to the New York Post. 

Police said earlier in the week that Mint was an ‘at-risk’ due to a reported previous threat of suicide. 

They said she had left the home of her mom with a suitcase and left a note indicating she had left the residence. Police believed she was in the Tenderloin area.

The Tenderloin is the center of the fentanyl crisis in San Francisco and is known for squalid conditions, homelessness, crime, drug trade, 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 created the imaging service Flickr with her then partner, Butterfield. They sold the image-hosting website to Yahoo in 2005.

Since then, Fake has served on the board 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 pair have two young children together. 

Fake is now in a relationship with Jaiku co-founder, Jyri Engestrom, and the couple share three children between them. 

In 2021, Butterfield purchased a $31.7 million mansion in Aspen, Colorado. The residence sprawls over a five-acre estate overlooking the Castle Creek Valley. 

The property boasts a generous home gym, a home theatre, a games room, a 500-bottle wine cellar, a tasting room, six en-suite bedrooms and a three-car garage.

Butterfield also owns a $19 million home in San Francisco, which has seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms and sits in the posh Presidio Heights neighborhood.