Woman reported missing 31 years ago found in Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN (AP):

A Pennsylvania woman, who went missing more than 30 years ago in a case that stumped authorities who later declared her legally dead, has been found living in a nursing home in Puerto Rico.

Patricia Kopta left behind a husband and siblings and meandered through northern Puerto Rico for a while before she was taken as a person “in need” to the adult care home in 1999, according to details announced at a news conference this week in Ross Township, where she once lived.

Kopta, once known as a street preacher in her home town, initially kept her past secret while in Puerto Rico. But she began to divulge details as she suffered progressively from dementia, Ross Township Deputy Police Chief Brian Kohlhepp said.

By last year, a social worker at the home had enough information to alert authorities back home about the now-83-year-old woman. A DNA test has confirmed her identity, Kohlhepp said.

Her husband, Bob Kopta, and her surviving sister, 78-year-old Gloria Smith, filled in details of Kopta’s life at the news conference and in telephone interviews Friday with The Associated Press (AP).

Patricia Kopta had been nicknamed ‘The Sparrow’ because of her slight build, and often frequented parking lots and busy roads in the largely residential community of about 31,000 north of Pittsburgh, where she would caution passersby and motorists about the end of the world.

But before she began preaching, Kopta was a straight-A student who became a model and dance instructor. After graduating high school, she worked in finance at a Pittsburgh plate glass company and would attend ballroom dancing events weekly, according to her family.

She would vacation often in Puerto Rico with her friends before she got married, Smith recalled.

“She just loved the ocean, the beach, the warm sunshine,” Smith told the AP.

Smith said her sister quit her job at the glass company after 10 years because of migraines that doctors blamed on stress. She then got a job as an elevator operator at The Art Institute of Pittsburgh.

That’s when family members noticed a change in her.

“She said something about seeing an angel there,” Smith recalled.

Shortly afterward, Kopta began preaching and was briefly institutionalised after doctors diagnosed her with “delusions of grandeur” and said she had signs of schizophrenia. Upon her release, she kept preaching until she vanished in 1992.

“I come home one night, and she’s just gone,” Bob Kopta told the AP.

They had been married for 20 years.