Cell phone allows express espresso After seven months, she is still unidentified
There is a woman walking around town that has no clue who she is.
For the past seven months Santa Monica Police detectives, Los Angeles County doctors and psychologists have been trying to help a woman find her identity. Earlier this year, she walked into the Crocodile Cafe on Ocean Avenue and collapsed.
The woman, who is suffering from amnesia, cannot recall who she is or any events prior to waking into the hospital last March. Detectives say they have run her fingerprints and have checked the missing persons lists, but they have turned up nothing so far.
“We’re working closely with the California Department of Justice to sort through hundreds of possible leads,” said Santa Monica Detective W.S. Brown. “We also sent numerous teletypes to numerous agencies with her description and checked her fingerprints through California (state police) and the FBI but nothing has worked out.”
Police describe the woman as about 60 years old, with graying brown hair and hazel eyes. She is 5 feet 3 inches tall, and weighs 170 pounds. She is missing her upper and lower teeth, but does not appear to be homeless.
“Normal homeless are dirty and disheveled,” said Brown. “But she was clean and well-kept and had showered.”
The woman also had the characteristics of being a smoker, detectives say, but she neither remembered smoking nor went through nicotine withdrawal. She also is diabetic and will have to undergo eye surgery from complications of the disease.
Currently, she is staying at the Pasadena Residential Care Facility, where doctors are trying to help her regain her memory.
“She’s under therapy right now. They take her on walks and things to help her remember,” Brown said. “But we believe she either had a bad experience or incident downtown on Alvarado Street.”
Steve Van Singel, administrator of the Pasadena Residential Care Facility, said the woman declined to be interviewed and did not want any publicity right now.
“The patient is concerned because she has some eye surgery coming up, and she would prefer for this (story) to take place after the first of the year,” said Van Singel. “She is under a great deal of pressure and stress right now.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 20, 2001. Read the original PDF.