Marissa Pianko felt restless. She had a good life. She had a loving family and a financially lucrative career. She was happy. But approaching mid-life, she wanted to feel passionate about her contribution to the wider world.

One day, she stumbled upon a family secret – her mother was adopted and had never told anyone. Pianko embarked on a deep dive of her family’s history, and after extensive research she found her mother’s biological family. Investigating and solving this personal mystery sparked the excitement she had been seeking.

“I realized this is what I wanted to do,” she said. “I felt like I was good at it. I didn’t give up when it was hard, I pushed through. I really took this seriously.”

Pianko followed her new passion to UCLA Extension, with a plan to become an investigative journalist. The skills she learned in the classroom helped her and three other friends crack a double homicide cold case that had confounded law enforcement officials for more than 15 years. She had found her calling. She had found her second act.

“I never had a sense in life that what I was doing was what I really wanted to be doing. I never had a passion for my career like that,” she said. “Investigating this case hit me hard. I had a fire in my belly and I wanted to keep going with that. This is what I felt like was my next step.”

A Los Angeles native, Pianko graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in business administration. She worked in finance, forensic accounting and real estate development finance. But she had always worked more out of obligation than fulfillment.

“I just knew I needed to get out and make a good living,” she said. “So finance it was.”

Investigative journalism enriched her with the high that came from researching and uncovering hidden information. While in the program, she published stories on Los Angeles oil wells and mountain lion rodenticide. The work felt good.

Pianko came upon an old news clip of a car being extracted from a ravine. The news anchor said that what was once thought to be a terrible accident was now being investigated as a double homicide. She could not shake the footage, and when she Googled the case, she found out it was still unsolved more than 15 years later.

“I just started getting more and more interested and pulling at various strings,” she said.

Pianko’s drive was contagious – three other moms joined her in trying to solve the case, leveraging their skills in investigative journalism, project management and opposition research.

“We were all trying to figure out our next act,” Pianko said. “Especially for women, you go into your mid-40s and now what? Now what are you going to do? I wasn’t ready to just call it quits. I wanted to do something really meaningful and we all sort of saw this as our second act.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, that is when the group really dialed in. Pianko remembers sitting on her closet floor with all of her documents strewn about, conducting long Zoom sessions with her friends. Eventually, they were out with masks going and canvassing neighborhoods. They met with the case detective. Then they presented to the district attorney.

“And it just kind of exploded,” Pianko said. “We worked for two and a half years and we solved it.”

The case revolved around a couple in their 60s – small business owners – who disappeared on a Saturday and did not show up for work that Monday. Six weeks later their car was found by a hiker at the bottom of a ravine. When law enforcement went down into the canyon, they found the two bodies.

“Originally they assumed it was a car accident – that it was a dangerous road and that they flew off the edge,” Pianko said. “But the evidence in the car pointed to the fact that it was not. This was not an accident. This was intentional.”

For a long time, the moms followed the original leads that pointed to potential foul play from the family. Some stood to gain a lot in inheritance, and the small business was closed shortly after the couple went missing.

But Pianko and her team found something more sinister – the couple was caught in the web of organized crime, which bought their business and used it for money laundering. When the bank became suspicious the mob got scared and eliminated them.

“It was a crazy experience,” Pianko said. “We found this one piece of evidence that changed everything. The feeling we felt when we were putting those pieces together was exhilarating. We had put so much time into the case during such a difficult time when the world was dealing with COVID and isolation. It had become our obsession, in a way, and to have a resolution on that was amazing.”

Sitting down with the family is something Pianko will never forget.

“It was nice to give them that sense of solace,” she said.

Her time at UCLA Extension immediately aided the investigation. She learned strategies for unearthing different court files. Her broadcast class connected her with people who had video of the crime scene. And most of all, she felt a sense of support and community.

“I had some great, great instructors. There was so much knowledge and information. There were other students in class who were writing amazing things. We worked together to figure out how to get information. We had to be really vulnerable putting our writing out there. And I developed great relationships that are still with me today,” she said.

Pianko and her fellow moms have been branded the “Carpool Detectives.” A nonfiction book about their investigation authored by Chuck Hogan was released last year. She hopes their story helps inspire others.

“In this phase of our lives, you don’t have to be put out to pasture,” she said. “You can reinvent yourself and figure out a totally new way to move forward.”

She and her friends are not stopping anytime soon. A new investigation is underway. This time they are seeking to unearth the identity of a serial killer who may be responsible for the murder of more than 20 women. Police have not been able to solve it for more than 50 years.

“It was basically another file that got left behind,” Pianko said. “There are a lot of Jane Does and we want to give them names. We want to provide some sort of closure, whatever that may be, to the families of these people.”