A decades-old family mystery got a positive resolution when a woman from Ross, missing since 1992, was found alive some 1,700 miles away in Puerto Rico.

Patricia Kopta, now 82 and diagnosed with dementia, was identified by a social worker at an adult care home. At a briefing at the Ross Township Police Department on Thursday, family members said their long search is finally over.

“We're very thankful to know that Patty is alive and well,” said her sister Gloria Smith.

“You wouldn’t believe what we’ve been through,” said Bob Kopta, the woman’s husband. “It’s such a relief to know she’s alive.”

Early in their 20-year marriage, he said, she was a typical suburbanite who commuted to various jobs in Pittsburgh including a stint as an elevator operator. They had no children. At home, she practiced her commitment to the Roman Catholic faith, and on Sundays worshiped at church.

In time, said Mr. Kopta, he noticed progressively unusual behavior as his wife’s religious zeal deteriorated into irrational rants. She claimed the mother of God appeared to her and warned of a coming nuclear Armageddon.

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

Because of her short, slight frame and erratic gait, the Downtown street crowd nicknamed her The Sparrow. In 1991 or 1992, she was mugged by a group of girls who stole her wedding and engagement rings.

Behavior problems led to encounters with police. When she was arrested in Monroeville, doctors said she was having delusions of grandeur.

Suddenly in 1992, Mr. Kopta came home and she was gone, he said. He filed a missing person report with the Ross Police Department.

The case remained open for years. Mr. Kopta got one letter from his wife saying someone was after her, a claim he had heard many times before. In 1997, Ross police even consulted a psychic who said Ms. Kopta was no longer with us; her body was close to water.

She had been missing for six years in 1998 when Post-Gazette columnist Dennis Roddy wrote about Ms. Kopta’s troubled life.

“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,” he wrote. “... Her absence has been noted incrementally in the city. People occasionally, in passing conversation, will say something like, ‘I haven't seen The Sparrow for a long time.’ Mostly they let it pass.”

In June 1999, an unidentified woman in need of help was admitted to an adult care home in Puerto Rico. She was reluctant to discuss her prior life, but suggested that she had traveled to the island on a cruise ship from Europe, a claim that could not be confirmed.

Brian Kohlhepp, Ross deputy police chief, said he was contacted last year by an Interpol agent and social worker from Puerto Rico who said the woman might be Ms. Kopta.

“She was known to have wandered the towns of Naranjito, Corozal and Toa Alta,” he said in a statement. “... As she aged, she released more details and they were able to make the connection and contacted the Ross Police.”

Deputy Chief Kohlhepp notified the Kopta family, and the department began a nine-month forensic process of confirming her identity. Puerto Rican authorities were sent a swab kit to sample her DNA, and the woman’s dental records were found.

“In addition, we were able to track down a living sister and nephew here in the Pittsburgh area [and] they also provided cheek swab DNA samples,” Deputy Chief Kohlhepp said. “These were processed and revealed that the woman in Puerto Rico is indeed Patricia Kopta, alive and well for her advanced age and condition.”

Mr. Kopta eventually had his wife declared dead, but he didn’t remarry. He and Ms. Smith said Thursday they’d love to reunite the family and bring Ms. Kopta home. But her mental and physical health remain challenged. She told care home workers that she’d rather stay where she is. Ms. Smith said she’s considering taking a trip to Puerto Rico.

John Hayes: jhayes@post-gazette.com.

First Published: March 3, 2023, 1:49 a.m.