Very strange and sad story.
If she was an enthusiastic JW why did no one help her?
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/03/now_we_know_her_name_elba.html
Mystery woman found at Woodbridge mall identified
by Susan K. Livio/The Star-Ledger Sunday March 22, 2009, 4:41 PM
AMANDA BROWN/THE STAR-LEDGER A woman who became a patient at Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Glen Gardner was found 14 years ago wandering the Woodbridge Center Mall, unable to tell authorities anything about herself. She now suffers from Alzheimer's, but only recently has her identity been learned.
A security guard found her on Nov. 2, 1994, wandering through the Woodbridge Center mall, well-dressed and clean but lost and disoriented. She carried no identification in her purse, and in broken English explained she couldn't remember who she was or how she had gotten there.
For years, a private room at the Senator Garrett W. Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Hunterdon County has been her home, where she has remained a Jane Doe unknown to herself and the world -- missed, it seemed, by no one. All the while, Hagedorn's mystery woman drifted deeper into Alzheimer's, losing her ability to speak. But through the diligence of a Human Services police officer who made her case his own special mission for six years, she now has her name back and some of her past.
She is Elba Leonor Diaz Soccarras.
She will turn 75 in five days.
She left behind six brothers and sisters and a poor farming community in northern Colombia when she came to the United States in 1969.
Although she never finished the process of becoming a U.S. citizen, she entered the country legally. She is entitled to Medicaid and care at a nursing home, a more fitting home for an elderly woman than a psychiatric hospital.
"Now at least she will have the dignity of dying as a human being and not as an unknown," said Human Services Police Lt. Eduardo Ojeda.
Ojeda hasn't unraveled the more disturbing aspects of her story: how a sick and vulnerable woman wound up in the mall alone, and why no one ever reported her missing. He suspects she was abandoned in Woodbridge as she grew sicker and more difficult to manage.
He said he plans to turn the file over to the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office to determine whether a criminal investigation is warranted.
"The fact that she was deprived of her IDs" tells him "whoever left her at the mall didn't want her to be identified and didn't want to be found themselves," Ojeda said.
But clearly people remembered Elba.
When The Star-Ledger and other newspapers reported details of her plight and published photographs in September, the tips poured in, Ojeda said.
"The vast majority of these people wanted to remain anonymous, but they said she had a daughter living in Brooklyn," he said. He pulled the daughter's birth certificate, which lists Elba Soccarras as her mother.
"Elba Leonor Soccarras" was the same name she uttered once to a staffer in Marlboro Psychiatric Hospital, her first home after she was found at the shopping mall. But because of her deteriorating condition, authorities could never be sure it was her real name; they could find no records for Elba Leonor Soccarras. And she told someone else her name was Alba.
At Hagedorn she was "Jane Doe," and that was the name written on masking tape on her door.
SAED HINDASH/THE STAR-LEDGER Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Glen Gardener. A Jane Doe was found wandering around Woodbridge Center Mall around Christmas 14 years ago. She has lived in this psychiatric hospital ever since.
PAINSTAKING PROGRESS
The tips last fall led Ojeda to the Colombia consulate's office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and New York state and city officials.
Through records and anecdotes from people who came forward, Ojeda pieced together fragments of information amounting to minor victories and major disappointments.
She had worked at various factory jobs making dolls, dresses and blouses, and was a member of the Toy and Novelty Workers of America Local 2233, Ojeda said.
She had a boyfriend, but he abandoned her after she became pregnant with their daughter. She never married.
She enthusiastically practiced her faith as a Jehovah's Witness. One woman told Ojeda she had seen Soccarras handing out religious literature numerous times in the Brooklyn subway station, and that they became so friendly she invited Elba to her home.
"She said: 'I remembered she was having some tough times. I used to give her money for her daughter,'" Ojeda said. "She paid for Soccarras' daughter's class trips and a winter coat."
Mother and daughter fought a lot, Ojeda said, citing reports from people who came forward last fall. Their relationship suffered in the girl's late teens and early 20s because Soccarras disapproved of her boyfriend.
Ojeda says that when he interviewed the daughter on Feb. 27, the 36-year-old woman told him she had lost touch with her mother years ago and assumed her mother had moved back to Colombia.
The Star-Ledger obtained her name and contact information through public records. She lives in Brooklyn's Flatbush section, in a tidy, well-preserved six-story brick building on a busy thoroughfare adjacent to a school and a church.
Approached by a reporter outside her apartment Friday night, the daughter refused to comment.
"I told you no," she said and slammed the door.
A photo that state investigators obtained during their search for "Jane Doe's" true identity shows Elba Leonor Diaz Soccarras around 1972, when she would have been 38 years old, before she gave birth to her daughter.
WANDERING OFF
In the late 1980s and early '90s, Elba Soccarras' life began to unravel. Her health declined. She got evicted.
"She was taken in by another family for about eight months, but they couldn't handle her because she was wandering off," Ojeda said. "A couple of times they had to call the police to find her. They indicated to me she attempted to walk across the Verrazano Bridge on foot. She would wander the streets and call out her daughter's name."
There must have been a period of time when someone was driving Soccarras to Woodbridge and leaving her there during the day, Ojeda says. Or maybe she lived with someone temporarily in Woodbridge.
Tipsters told Ojeda there were frequent Elba sightings at the Pathmark supermarket in the Avenel section of Woodbridge, as well as the mall about five miles away. He learned she was a frequent Burger King customer, ordering a cheeseburger and a coffee every time.
Marla Kentos, 34, of Edison recognized Soccarras right away from the newspaper photos as the well-dressed woman she frequently saw at the supermarket or the nearby bagel shop. Nearly every time Kentos went shopping with her mother, they would notice the woman walking alone with two large shopping bags.
"She was there all the time," Kentos said. "He hair was always up, her face done, but you could tell she was misplaced. It was so sad. She was very quiet and to herself."
When Soccarras' friends at church or from the neighborhood in Brooklyn stopped seeing her around, they assumed she had moved away or even returned to Colombia.
"Like most immigrants, she came to this country looking for a better life, looking to improve her quality of life," Ojeda said. "Unfortunately she's one of many immigrants who life dealt a bum hand."
But by confirming her legal residence, Ojeda has done her a favor.
Although she received quality care at Hagedorn, Soccarras didn't belong there, state officials agreed. She was living at a psychiatric hospital only because, as a suspected illegal immigrant, she did not qualify for Medicaid, the pool of state and federal money that subsidizes nursing home placements.
Now, with her legal status established, her guardian is searching for a room at a nursing home.
"This is very exciting. It's good news for her because it means she would be able to be in a better placement," said Susan Hollander Whitman, Elba's legal representative at the state Office of the Public Guardian for Elderly Adults. "Being in a nursing home will provide her with the kind of care she deserves. ... She doesn't have psychiatric needs."
Debbie Smith, the chief executive officer at Hagedorn hospital, said the staff's happiness for Elba is tinged with a little sadness. Employees over the years have brought Elba teddy bears and blankets to comfort her. She will be missed.
"The bottom line is she does not need this level of service," Smith said. "But she has been here for a while. The staff loves her."