A Utah woman who went missing from a campsite in November has turned up alive more than five months later living in a tent nearby.
The 47-year-old woman, whose name is being withheld, was first reported missing from in the Diamond Fork area of Spanish Fork Canyon south of Provo on November 25, the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said. Her car, along with camping equipment and information that identified her, was found at a campground parking lot by a U.S. Forest Service official.
But she was nowhere to be found.
Over the next several months, searches continued. Efforts to contact both the missing woman and her family proved to be unsuccessful.
The investigation revealed she might be struggling with mental health issues.
Fast forward to Sunday, when a Utah County Sheriff’s sergeant and a drone operator went back to the area to see if she might still be there. On their first pass, the drone crashed. When they set off to recover it, they found a tent that looked to be abandoned.
That’s when the missing woman appeared, stepping out of the tent.
She "had lost a significant amount of weight and was weak," a news release said. It’s thought she had been in the area since November, eating the small amount of food she had with her and "grass and moss to subsist."
The woman apparently had access to plenty of water from a neighboring river.
She was taken to a local hospital for a mental evaluation and doesn’t face any charges, as living in the area isn’t illegal.
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