Pennsylvania woman missing since 1992 found alive in Puerto Rico – National | 24CA News
A lady from Pennsylvania who went lacking greater than 30 years in the past and was legally declared lifeless has turned up, very a lot alive, in a nursing house in Puerto Rico.
Patricia Kopta, 83, was final seen by her household in Pittsburgh in 1992, in response to a lacking particular person flyer posted by the Pennsylvania Emergency Response Center. At the time, she was a widely known road preacher generally known as “The Sparrow” due to her slight construct.
Her husband Bob Kopta reported her lacking in 1992, noting it wasn’t unusual for his spouse to depart for brief durations of time. No doubt he didn’t count on his spouse’s disappearance to stay a thriller 31 years later.
“I come home one night and she’s gone, and nobody knew where she was at,” Bob Kopta stated at a news convention with Ross Township Police final week.
U.S. police finally discovered the story of what occurred to Patricia after being contacted by an agent from the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) and a social employee from Puerto Rico who cared for her.
“What they reported to us was that she came into their care in 1999, when she was found in need in the streets of Puerto Rico,” stated Ross Township Deputy Chief Brian Kohlhepp.
Through the years that Patricia remained on the care house, she refused to share particulars about her personal life and the place she got here from. But as her age and dementia progressed, she started to share uncommon snippets about her previous.
By final yr, a social employee on the house had sufficient info to alert authorities again house concerning the now-83-year-old girl. A DNA take a look at has confirmed her id, Kohlhepp stated.
Patricia Kopta at care house in Puerto Rico.
Ross Township PD
Before her disappearance, Patricia was at a facility briefly after medical doctors identified her with “delusions of grandeur” and stated she had indicators of schizophrenia. She was launched and stored preaching till she disappeared, her household stated.
“She was concerned she was going to be institutionalized,” Kohlhepp stated Friday. “Which is what we believe led her to decide to flee the country.”
Before Patricia was married, she would trip usually in Puerto Rico along with her associates, in response to her surviving sister, 78-year-old Gloria Smith.
“She just loved the ocean, the beach, the warm sunshine,” Smith instructed the AP.
When she disappeared, Bob revealed adverts in Puerto Rican newspapers on the lookout for her, to no avail. Police went so far as to seek the advice of a psychic.
Years glided by with no signal of her. Bob, who had been married to Patricia for 20 years, obtained a dying declaration about seven years after her disappearance.
“I went through a lot,” stated Bob Kopta, a retired truck driver. “Every time they’d find a body somewhere (I wondered), ‘Is it Patricia? Is it Patricia?’”
Meanwhile, Patricia was apparently wandering the island’s northern cities of Naranjito, Corozal and Toa Alta, positioned simply southwest of the capital of San Juan. When she first was taken in on the grownup house, she had hinted that she had arrived in Puerto Rico through a cruise ship from Europe, Kohlhepp stated.
After a social employee contacted police in Pennsylvania, it took nearly a yr for DNA samples to substantiate that the lady was certainly Patricia.
“It’s a sad thing, but it’s a relief off my mind,” her husband stated. “When your wife goes missing, you’re a suspect.”
Bob, who didn’t remarry, stated he doesn’t plan to go to, and that he’s now attempting to overlook the previous, although he’s glad to know she’s being taken care of.
Smith, then again, needs to go to the island to see her older sister. She says she’s been unable to talk to the elder sibling on the cellphone as a result of she can not maintain a dialog given her dementia. Patricia’s twin sister died with out figuring out her fellow twin was nonetheless alive.
“Whether she knows me or not, I still want to see her and give her a hug and tell her I love her,” Smith stated. “I thought maybe she had died.”
— With information from The Associated Press
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