Hannah Kobayashi’s father killed himself after remaining days looking for lacking daughter in LA’s Skid Row turned ‘an excessive amount of to bear’

Ryan Kobayashi died of a ‘broken heart’ after searching for his missing daughter Hannah in the darkest corners of down-and-out downtown Los Angeles, friends tell DailyMail.com.

Ryan, 58, took his own life on Saturday night at a building near LAX, one of the last places Hannah was seen. 

His suicide came 11 days after his daughter, 30, vanished from the same airport.

Hannah remains missing and her family is desperate to find her. Now, they are coping with the double tragedy of Ryan’s death.  

‘He just broke…he died of a broken heart. There’s no foul play. It’s a tragedy,’ Larie Pidgeon, Hannah’s 45-year-old aunt told DailyMail.com. 

‘He had been searching for 11 days, very minimal sleep – going into areas of downtown Los Angeles, seeing the sex workers and Skid Row – and we believe as the days continued to pass it became too much for him to bear and he took his own life.

‘None of us saw it coming. Ryan is one of the kindest, most sensitive men that you’ve ever met. He’s a teddy bear,’ she said. 

Hannah and her father had been estranged, she said, but there was nothing that would have stopped him joining in the search for her. 

‘He was estranged from his daughter. They didn’t have the best relationship and he wasn’t there for her growing up but (in the end) he was there for her when it mattered. He came here when it mattered.

‘He was getting 30 minutes sleep a night, tossing and turning,’ she added. 

‘We’ve suffered two tragedies but we are doing our best to stay strong.

‘There’s only so much we can take and we are all at our breaking point and we do really, really want to find Hannah because she’s still missing.

‘We need your help to share this story.’

Ryan Kobayashi was last seen on Saturday evening.

‘We had a really great productive day handing out flyers and meeting with volunteers,’ says Pidgeon. 

‘It was a tiring day but it was a good day. 

‘We think that Ryan bottled it up. He didn’t want to make anyone else worry.’

Kobayashi’s other daughter, Hannah’s sister Sydni, 22, is with other members of her family in Los Angeles.

‘She’s devastated as you would imagine,’ adds Pidgeon. ‘It doesn’t seem real. It feels like a really bad dream.’

Last week, Ryan told DailyMail.com: ‘We will do everything we can until we have found her. We just need to get the word out there about her.

‘She’s a wonderful person who brings joy to so many people.’

Hannah has not been seen since November 11th, when she was last spotted boarding a train at Metro Pico station. 

Her family say they have seen surveillance footage of her. 

She sent a series of eerie texts to her loved ones, claiming she had recently undergone a ‘spiritual awakening, after she was due to meet family in New York. 

Kobayashi had flown from Hawaii to LAX on the same flight as her ex-boyfriend, who had booked tickets for the two of them before they split up. 

He continued to New York, and is ‘cooperating with police’, after a mystery final text was sent from Hannah’s phone, talking about her having a ‘spiritual awakening.’ 

The young traveler was captured by a security camera disembarking the plane just before 10pm on November 8.

The aspiring photographer was seen wearing a black hoodie and colorful sweatpants as she walked through LAX while wearing a pair of headphones. 

She was due to take a connecting flight at 11pm, however she never made it.

Before his death, Ryan and the rest of the family bemoaned the LAPD’s slow pace. 

They were forced to take the investigation into their own hands, they say, after being repeatedly ignored. 

The family told DailyMail.com police did not contact them for ten days after they first reported her missing.