Pittsburgh Woman Missing For 31 Years Found In Puerto Rico Nursing Home

Patricia Kopta disappeared without a trace in 1992, leaving her family in the dark about her whereabouts for more than three decades.

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However, in an unexpected turn of events, she was discovered alive and well in a nursing home 1,700 miles away from her last known location in Puerto Rico, ending the long-standing mystery surrounding her disappearance.

"I don't believe it. It was a total shock," Patricia Kopta's sister, Gloria Smith, told ABC 7. "We really thought she was dead all those years."

“You wouldn’t believe what we’ve been through,” her husband, Bob Kopta, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “It’s such a relief to know she’s alive.”

Initially, according to Kopta, his wife was a typical Roman Catholic suburbanite who commuted to Pittsburgh for work during the week and attended church and ballroom dancing events on the weekends.

However, her behavior began to change over time, and she became increasingly zealous in her religious beliefs.

This later evolved into incoherent ranting and assertions that the Virgin Mary had visited her and alerted her to an imminent nuclear apocalypse.

“Something must have happened. Somebody got to her because she started on this whole ‘the world is going to end’ thing,” Bob Kopta said.

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“She lost her job and started hanging around downtown. When there was a baseball game going on, when a concert was going on, she’d be telling everybody to go home because the world was going to end in three days.”

Kopta was a short, wiry woman with an erratic gait. Those who saw her downtown called her “The Sparrow.”

As described in a 1998 Post-Gazette piece, “The Sparrow was a fixture at Gateway Center, on the streets of Oakland, outside Three Rivers [Stadium] and sometimes in the middle of McKnight Road, where she’d lean into open car windows at traffic lights and inform startled drivers of God’s impending wrath… Her absence has been noted incrementally in the city.”

In the years leading up to her disappearance, Patricia Kopta was mugged by a group of girls who stole her wedding and engagement rings.

She also had several interactions with law enforcement, including an arrest in Monroeville where medical professionals diagnosed her with symptoms of schizophrenia and delusions of grandeur. Then, in 1992, Bob Kopta returned home to find his wife had vanished.

At the age of 52, Patricia Kopta disappeared without a trace from the streets of Pittsburgh, leaving her husband, siblings, and law enforcement officials baffled.

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Her case was eventually declared cold, and she was presumed dead. However, it was later discovered that she had checked into an adult care center in 1999 and initially claimed to have arrived in Puerto Rico via a cruise ship from Europe, according to Brian Kohlhepp, the Deputy Police Chief of Ross Township, as reported by CBS Pittsburgh.

With the onset of dementia, Patricia Kopta began to reveal bits and pieces about her life to a social worker, who then contacted an Interpol officer.

The officer reached out to Brian Kohlhepp, and eventually, Patricia's identity was confirmed through a DNA sample.

Months later, the police informed her husband, Bob, that his missing wife had been located almost 2,000 miles away.

“I come home one night and she’s just gone and nobody knows where she’s at,” Bob said during a police press conference Thursday.

“It’s been going on almost 31 years and it’s been bad. It cost me a lot of money. I even put advertisements down in the paper in Puerto Rico looking for her.”

According to her husband, who is now 83 years old, Smith had been dealing with mental health issues when she vanished.

He mentioned that she frequently desired to go to Puerto Rico where the climate was warm.

Smith was a well-known street preacher in the local community and was affectionately called "Patty" and "The Sparrow." She was often seen spending time outside in the city.

Smith expressed that the past 31 years have been devastating for her family.

“It was hard on all of us because my mother, her [other] sister and myself worried about her constantly,” she said.

But she said she hopes to pay her aging sis a visit down south.

“We’re so happy and I hope I can get down to see her,” she said.