UNSOLVED CA - Port Hueneme, LIVING HispFem 'Luxci', Sep'92

As of mid 1993, according to this article, she was alive, but alone.

Two mysteries: where is she now, and even if she was found - what is her real name?

I imagine this will not get many replies except from me - as with most of the threads I post.





Dailymotion - Lucy (Luxci) - a News & Politics video

SILENT WOMAN IN COTATI SUBJECT OF EARLIER PROBE ' UNSOLVED MYSTERIES ' COULDN'T HELP IDENTIFY HER
San Jose Merc. News (CA) - Thursday, December 16, 1993

Sonoma County officials are not the first to try to unravel the mystery surrounding the unidentified young woman found last week sleeping under newspapers on a Cotati sidewalk.

The homeless coordinator for Ventura County said Wednesday the same woman , who is deaf and apparently knows no language -- even sign language -- showed up there a year ago and became the focus of a major identity search that included a February appearance on television's " Unsolved Mysteries ."

But authorities still have no clues to her identity, nor can they explain how she has managed to survive on the streets -- and remain relatively clean and healthy -- with virtually no ability to communicate.

''It's an incredibly unusual case," Ventura County's Nancy Nazario said. "She seems to be bright, but she is functionally very impaired because of her inability to communicate clearly. It's surprising to me this woman is in as good shape as she is."

Nazario said the woman , who appears to be in her early 20s, was referred to her in October of last year after police found her on a roadway median strip near Oxnard.

They called her "Lucy" because that is the name that most closely resembled the crude letters she scrawled. She was of cheerful disposition but unable to hear, speak, read or write.

After mental health experts concluded that deafness had prevented her from learning language, she was approved for Supplemental Security Income, a federal disability program, and placed in a board-and-care home.

Then she bolted.

Nazario said she later saw the young woman several times on the streets. One one occasion she appeared badly bruised, but even then Nazario had no legal basis to detain her . So, she said, she simply waited for a crisis to force the woman to return to a more protected environment.

''She's very sweet but very strong-willed," Nazario said. "She's going to do what she's going to do."

That, the young woman had no difficulty communicating.

''The last time I saw her , I gave her my card, hoping she would contact me," Nazario recalled. "She looked up at me, smiled sweetly and tore it up."

When the young woman was found last week in Cotati , she was in possession of a small quantity of methamphetamine. She was held on a misdemeanor drug charge but only to give authorities a chance to establish her identity and try to help her .

''We're not going to proceed criminally," Sonoma County District Attorney Gene Tunney said earlier this week. "We just didn't want to kick her out in the street."

Deputy Public Defender Kirsten Dimond said Wednesday she has received hundreds of telephone calls from people who have read or heard about the woman and are eager to help . But so far, no one has been any more helpful than the woman herself in determining who she is and how she ended up in Sonoma County.

''She writes letters and numbers, but they never make any sense," Dimond said. "We'll probably never know how she got to Cotati ."


YouTube

[SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2][SIZE=-2]
[/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE][/SIZE]

MUTE WOMAN WAITS FOR NEW PLACEMENT
Oct 31 1992
LA Times

Oxnard shelter officials seeking to identify a mysterious woman who communicates only in sign language said they have referred her to a Ventura home for the developmentally disabled.

The woman needs more supervision than the shelter can provide, said Carol Roberg, associate director of the Women's Lighthouse shelter.

The Women's Lighthouse took the young Latina in after Port Hueneme police found her dancing on a Ventura Road traffic island late last month.

The woman was unable to speak and appeared to be deaf, communicating in hand signs that belonged to no established language for the deaf, according to a battery of interpreters who worked with her for several days.

Shelter officials eventually learned her name was Lucy, but could not find out where she belonged.

Then, when a popped balloon caused the woman to jump, shelter officials ordered electronic audiology tests that found her to have perfect hearing.

On Oct. 18, shelter officials turned her over to the Ventura County Mental Health Department for evaluation.

A doctor there ruled that she may be mildly mentally retarded and, while she hears, her brain may not be able to process the sounds.

-

The Mystery of L Deaf Woman Is Found Wandering in Port Hueneme
LA Times Oct 3, 1992.

Deaf, mute and illiterate, a young woman was found wandering the streets of Port Hueneme, posing a mystery that Ventura County shelter officials said Friday they cannot solve.

"She has been abandoned," said Marti Ruble, manager of the Women's Lighthouse shelter in Oxnard. "She does not know her name, she does not know how to communicate much."

Unable to explain her identity or show the way home, the slim, smiling, curly-haired woman on Friday became one of the first residents of the newly opened shelter.

"Can you imagine what a lonely feeling it must be?" said Carol Roberg, associate director of the shelter. "She can neither read nor write nor speak."

Using a deaf Latino member of the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness as an interpreter, shelter officials believe they have squeezed out a few scraps of information:

Her name begins with an L.

She is sweet-tempered, well-groomed, trusting-and quite lost.

She came to California by airplane.

She recently gave birth to a baby girl.

She wears a single cultured pearl pendant on a gold chain and three rings on her left hand: a filigree silver ring with an onyx stone, a man's pewter school ring reading "Inst. Bancario Comm. Latino Americano," and a gold ring with white stones shaped in the letter S, which may have been the baby's initial.

She recently wore white in a church ceremony-possibly a baptism or wedding.

She is wary of men.

Authorities met the woman when a citizen brought her into the Port Hueneme Police Department on Monday because she was "walking around acting like she was lost," said Officer Darin Schindler.

Trying to interview her in English, Spanish and the American Sign Language for the deaf, police could learn very little. All they knew was that her clothes were clean and she was carrying about $10 in American currency, Schindler said.

"She seemed to be fine, so after about five hours we had to let her go," he said.

Later that evening, Schindler was on patrol when he spotted the woman again, dancing in the median of Ventura Road near Pleasant Valley Road.

"I don't know what the deal is with her," he said. "At times she'll try to talk to you using body language, but she was acting real strange. She kept walking into traffic, causing traffic problems."

More attempts at communication were fruitless: "We'd write down things like, `What's your name?' and she'd write gibberish, numbers and letters that don't mean anything," Schindler said.

Police finally turned her over to Ventura County mental health workers, who kept her for observation at their Ventura inpatient unit. The workers had a doctor examine her at Ventura County Medical Center, where it was determined that she had given birth. However, they later released her after ruling she was not a danger to herself or others.

Officials from the mental health department and the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness arranged for the woman to enter the shelter Friday.

On Friday, officials from the council on deafness interviewed her.

They tried hand signs in English, American Sign Language and Spanish, "and none of them could make any sense," said Barbara Meehan, an adviser for the group's Ventura County chapter.

"Her signs are a combination of Mexican signs and home signs," Meehan said. "Home signs are made up in the home so only people in the home can understand them."

On Friday, Women's Lighthouse workers began calling newspapers and television stations, hoping that someone who knows her will see her picture.

Until then, the woman with no name waits in the shelter, cuddling and patting a stuffed white teddy bear they have given her.

She sways back and forth for minutes at a time, cradling it in her arms, her gaze distant and her chin sunk into its fur.

Then she brightens, beaming broadly, and tosses it lightly into the air, focusing on it like a mother on her child.
[Illustration]
PHOTO: Marti Ruble of the Women's Lighthouse shelter in Oxnard tries to solve young woman's mystery.; PHOTO: COLOR, (A1) Woman known only as L.; PHOTO: An unidentified deaf woman whose name begins with the letter L finds comfort in a teddy bear. /

---------

EXPERTS SAY WOMAN IS NOT DEAF
LA TImes Oct 9 1992

A homeless mystery woman whom Oxnard shelter officials believed was deaf was revealed Thursday to have perfect hearing, but she has a mental age of 9, according to experts who examined her.

Officials at the Women's Lighthouse shelter said they still don't know who the young woman is or where she came from, but they were disappointed to learn that the woman was posing as a deaf person. The revelation came from hearing tests that were ordered after the woman, whom shelter officials have named Lucy, jumped when a balloon popped behind her, said shelter Director Carol Roberg. While an audiologist rated the woman's hearing as perfect by measuring her brain waves, a psychologist ruled that she has a childlike mind, limited reasoning and possibly dyslexia, Roberg said.

"I feel a bit discouraged," said Roberg, associate director of the Ventura County Rescue Mission, which runs the shelter. "I said to her, `Lucy, you've been putting us on (and) you've been making monkeys of us,' " Roberg said, explaining that she augmented her speech by imitating an ape. "She just cast her eyes downward and looked embarrassed. When I further tried to talk to her, she pretended she didn't understand-or she really didn't."

Also disappointed were officials at the local chapter of the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness. A battery of deaf interpreters skilled in several languages spent days trying to decipher the woman's foreign hand signs. "The signs don't mean anything," said Coleen Ashly, advocacy specialist for Tri-County GLAD. "Whether she's got some other processing problem or whether she's just faking, we have no way of knowing that."

-

WANDERER TO BE PUT IN HOME
Daily News of LA (CA) - Friday, October 30, 1992

A Latina woman discovered wandering aimlessly in Oxnard a month ago whom authorities believe is mute, deaf and illiterate, has been placed with the Ventura County Mental Health Services, officials said Thursday.

The woman , who has indicated only that her name is Luxci, is being tested by Mental Health Services and the Tri-County Regional Center and will be placed in a home for developmentally disabled people.

"We don't have the professional help here to deal with her problems," said Carol Roberg, director of the Ventura County Rescue Mission's Lighthouse Women 's Shelter, where the woman first was placed. "We are not equipped to handle the magnitude of issues. She has to be completely retrained."

Although a physical examination showed sound waves traveling through her brain stem, a psychologist later said that she was deaf because the sounds were not being processed, said Roberg.

Duane Essex, deputy director of mental health services, said all patient information is confidential and he could not discuss the case.

The woman first was found Sept. 28 on Wooley Road in Oxnard. A passerby took her to the Port Hueneme Police Department and she ultimately was placed in the shelter, officials said.

Chris Barrows, a volunteer at Lighthouse Shelter who has been working with the woman since her third day at the shelter, said the woman ran away
from the shelter Oct. 18 and was found later weaving in and out of traffic.

"When police brought her back after she ran away, she was very withdrawn and depressed," Barrows said. "She just cried and said she wanted to get on an airplane and go home. I called the Mexican Consulate and the (Immigration and Naturalization Services), but they couldn't help because we have no accurate birth date, age or anything else."

For almost three weeks, Barrows said, she communicated with the woman through some home-taught sign language, drawings and hand gestures. The woman has not spoken and does not understand English, Spanish or other languages used in South America.

"We know she is from Mexico," said Barrows, who owns three homes for the developmentally disabled and is a communication specialist. "But we don't know how to get her back to her home.

TESTING PROVES WOMAN FOUND ON STREET CAN HEAR
Daily News of LA - Friday, October 9, 1992

After spending days trying to communicate with a woman they believed was deaf , mute and illiterate, officials at a women's shelter have learned that she can hear, but are still unable to identify her.

Workers with the Tri-County Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness and the Lighthouse Women's Shelter have been trying to learn the identity of the Latina woman since she was found wandering the streets of Oxnard on Sept. 28, officials said.

Findings by an audiologist Wednesday that the woman could hear angered the advocate for the deaf and the hearing impaired who with others has been trying to talk to her through American and Spanish sign language.

"I think she was just acting," said Colleen Ashly, advocacy specialist for the deaf and hearing impaired at the Tri-County Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness. "A lot of people find out that by portraying a deaf person, they can get a lot of sympathy from people.

"They find out that there's a whole range of services that they never had access to before. They can find food, they can find money, they can get free medical care, so they basically exploit the deaf community by portraying a deaf person."

Carol Roberg, associate director of the Ventura County Rescue Mission's Lighthouse Women's Shelter, said she is convinced the woman is unable to speak, read or write.

"I think she's genuine, trying to figure out where she is and who she is," Roberg said. "I think someone has used her and just abandoned her."

Roberg said that when confronted with the results of the hearing test, the woman appeared to be embarrassed but did not speak.

"She cast her eyes down after she was told we found out," Roberg said. ''She tried to explain her story again in a primitive sign language that she uses, a lot of motions and hand gestures. I told her that we loved her and that we still wanted to help her."

The search for the woman's identity began Sept. 28, when a resident brought her to the Port Hueneme Police Department after watching her walk aimlessly on Wooley Road in Oxnard, officials said.

"She apparently couldn't speak, read or write. She was apparently deaf ," said Brynda Parrott, Port Hueneme police dispatcher, who said the woman is between 20 and 25 years old, 5 feet tall, weighs about 100 pounds and has shoulder-length curly brown hair and brown eyes.

Police turned the woman over to Ventura County mental health workers, who along with Tri-County officials took her to the shelter, officials said.

Workers began to suspect that the woman could hear during her stay at the Tri-County office, Ashly said. She responded to a police siren by walking to the window and looking outside, Ashly said.

The woman showed no interest in attempts to find out where she was from through the use of picture books, maps, and flags, she added.

"And when we went to the neighborhood where she had been initially arrested, then she became very withdrawn, very shy, and very unwilling to let people see her face," Ashly said. "In my mind, that was very suspicious behavior. That indicated to me that she didn't want anyone to recognize her."

The woman was given a brain stem examination on Wednesday and a Ventura audiologist measured sound waves traveling through her brain stem, Ashly said. Deaf people show no measurements, she said.

"I told her that over and over again, and she just acted like she didn't understand," Ashly said. "She just kept shaking her head."
Caption: photo
photo: (Color in T.O. Edition) This woman was found wandering around
Oxnard on Sept. 28.

CarlK90245 said:

You can edit the title if you go into "Go Advanced" edit mode (If you initiated it and it is within 24 hours of posting)

Click to expand...

thanks

I remember this from the Unsolved Mysteries episode. How interesting, though, that they found out she can hear. It sounds to me like she had some mental problems which bought her to the streets. It would be nice to identify her, though. Are there no photos of this woman?

Mr. E said:

I remember this from the Unsolved Mysteries episode. How interesting, though, that they found out she can hear. It sounds to me like she had some mental problems which bought her to the streets. It would be nice to identify her, though. Are there no photos of this woman?

Click to expand...

Just the ones at the end of the segment you see.

Shoot...my computer has issues with videos for some reason lately. I didn't watch the ones you posted, and I only vaguely remember the episode. I'll check the UM website, though...

Mr. E said:

Shoot...my computer has issues with videos for some reason lately. I didn't watch the ones you posted, and I only vaguely remember the episode. I'll check the UM website, though...

Click to expand...

Sorry, it's not on there. They don't really care about solving cases anymore, just money for them and that's it. It's not like the old days anymore. The spirit of caring died on that show when Robert Stack died.

Click these links for two screenshots of her.

Fascinating story--so she missing now? I wonder how she would have been able to survive on the streets. I wish we could get better photos of her--I wonder of Ventura Cty LE would have any? She could be one of the hundreds of UID's. The ring appears to come from the International Banking Institute in Panama.
http://www.institutobancario.org/

When I worked in mental health, I had a client who was unable to speak due to surgery for throat cancer. She was in her 60s, flamboyantly mentally ill, very poorly educated (she made it through 3rd grade, from what I was able to gather), and probably developmentally delayed to boot.

She would try to "write" letters and words on the air, and become very frustrated that people couldn't understand what she meant. And because she was so "lost" in her mental illness, she sometimes almost seemed deaf, if that makes sense. Having said all that to say, I wonder if this young woman wasn't so much putting on an act of being deaf, as she was too mentally ill or developmentally delayed to interact as one who can hear. Sorry for that convoluted sentence, LOL.

Maybe she was living with elderly parents who died and she wandered off. Would seem that someone would recognise her though.

Thanks for posting this case UMfanforever! I totally remember her. The collection of articles is great. Does anyone know where she is now? Like is she still in CA or did she manage to find her way back home? Are there any more recent articles?

I might have found a more plausible connection to the ring -

Instituto Bancario Comercial Latinoamericano A.c
Prisciliano Sanchez 323 Guadalajara Centro, Jalisco 44100,
t: 3336131353

Jalisco is a state on the western side of Mexico (Puerto Vallarta is there). The school has no website or email (that I could find).

I did find a Luxci on a Mexican social networking site who lives in Oaxaca. I think she looks much younger than the "mystery woman" would be now, but she does use some really strange language. I don't know if it's a regional dialect or slang or what but it's not really standard Spanish.

for example: olaaaa am pz aki les dejo esta foottooo mi me firman okis los kieloo muxooo

She's the only Luxci that the Google Mexico pulls up.

Is it possible that she is partially feral? It's very rare, but if she really knows no language, and really has as little in the way of social skills as they say, it seems possible. If she can hear, and they thought she couldn't, have they medically stated that there is no way that she can speak...or has she just never been spoken to? Feral people are created when children are ignored or locked away. Sometimes, and only very very very rarely, it's a trauma response. If she was locked away, never sent to school, never spoken to, never interacted with, but was taught grooming skills and eating habits...and then the caretakers died or she escaped, I don't know how the person would react out in the world.

Yes, I know, think horses. Occam would hate me.

Julessleuther said:

Fascinating story--so she missing now? I wonder how she would have been able to survive on the streets. I wish we could get better photos of her--I wonder of Ventura Cty LE would have any? She could be one of the hundreds of UID's. The ring appears to come from the International Banking Institute in Panama.
http://www.institutobancario.org/

Click to expand...

I have been unable to find any other articles since late 1993 when it said she was in Cotati (above). However ,that wasn't exactly a happy article: she had been taken to a home of some sort in Ventura County as opposed to the shelter she was living in during this Unsolved Mysteries episode. She escaped the home. Then she ended up on the street, all the way up in Cotati - which is an incredible distance away, by the end of 1993, and had drugs on her. Still alone, still not speaking, at one time badly bruised...

Not exactly encouraging, and makes you think she could be a UID , because even if they put her in a shelter up there or a home (don't know), she might have escaped again.

annemc2 said:

Thanks for posting this case UMfanforever! I totally remember her. The collection of articles is great. Does anyone know where she is now? Like is she still in CA or did she manage to find her way back home? Are there any more recent articles?

I might have found a more plausible connection to the ring -

Instituto Bancario Comercial Latinoamericano A.c
Prisciliano Sanchez 323 Guadalajara Centro, Jalisco 44100,
t: 3336131353

Jalisco is a state on the western side of Mexico (Puerto Vallarta is there). The school has no website or email (that I could find).

Click to expand...

There could be more articles/sightings. I just haven't found them yet. Her status is unknown, but I would say not only missing but unidentified. Just hoping someone can figure out what her real name is someday!

FWIW, I worked with the children of migrant Mexican families in farming in the US from 1993-1999. My specialty was education of children with special needs and disabilities.

We dealt with one family who had a daughter with significant delays, mainly b/c where they had been in Mexico, her "condition" was considered to be an embarrassment for the family, and they hid her in the home and from visitors, and the siblings were told not to mention that she existed. The mom had worked in a chemical factory in Mexico while pregnant, and this child was born with many challenges. The child had never been to school and never really even out in public when we (literally) found her hidden in their apt.

Her family loved her very much, but culturally, they had been so accustomed to keeping her away from society b/c they were ashamed, that they had no idea that there were services and schooling for children with special needs in the US. The mom was so grateful when we found her and told her that we could help. She obviously loved her daughter very much, but since the mom had no education at all, either, it was a HUGE challenge.

The little girl regularly attended school (most migrant kids miss a ton of school, but she was always there). We had a zillion specialists working with her, but since she was about 12 and never had any kind of formal language, not Spanish, not English, not sign language, but a few "home signs," it was INCREDIBLY difficult to make much progress.

Developmentally, if people do not "get" a formal language by age 8, it is highly unlikely that they will ever be ABLE to acquire formal language. Those neural transmissions just don't develop after that age. (This is one of the reasons that many Deaf advocates encourage use of ASL when children are young, even if the family insists on English down the road, so that the critical language development years are not "lost," but that is a separate, heated argument.)

HTH.

runr said:

FWIW, I worked with the children of migrant Mexican families in farming in the US from 1993-1999. My specialty was education of children with special needs and disabilities.

We dealt with one family who had a daughter with significant delays, mainly b/c where they had been in Mexico, her "condition" was considered to be an embarrassment for the family, and they hid her in the home and from visitors, and the siblings were told not to mention that she existed. The mom had worked in a chemical factory in Mexico while pregnant, and this child was born with many challenges. The child had never been to school and never really even out in public when we (literally) found her hidden in their apt.

Her family loved her very much, but culturally, they had been so accustomed to keeping her away from society b/c they were ashamed, that they had no idea that there were services and schooling for children with special needs in the US. The mom was so grateful when we found her and told her that we could help. She obviously loved her daughter very much, but since the mom had no education at all, either, it was a HUGE challenge.

The little girl regularly attended school (most migrant kids miss a ton of school, but she was always there). We had a zillion specialists working with her, but since she was about 12 and never had any kind of formal language, not Spanish, not English, not sign language, but a few "home signs," it was INCREDIBLY difficult to make much progress.

Developmentally, if people do not "get" a formal language by age 8, it is highly unlikely that they will ever be ABLE to acquire formal language. Those neural transmissions just don't develop after that age. (This is one of the reasons that many Deaf advocates encourage use of ASL when children are young, even if the family insists on English down the road, so that the critical language development years are not "lost," but that is a separate, heated argument.)

HTH.

Click to expand...

That's sad. Are you saying they can't even be tought the alphabet and taught as if they were in kindergarten or pre-school?

UMfanforever said:

That's sad. Are you saying they can't even be tought the alphabet and taught as if they were in kindergarten or pre-school?

Click to expand...

I'm not saying that; 20 years of linguistics and language acquisition research indicates that.