Three decades later, wife found in Puerto Rico nursing home

In 1999, social workers in Puerto Rico found a woman wandering the streets and took her into an adult care home. She spoke little about her life and where she came from. But over the years, the woman began sharing more details, authorities said.

Those details led caregivers and investigators on a trail to Ross Township, just north of Pittsburgh, and a decades-old missingperson case. In 1992, Robert Kopta had reported his wife, Patricia, missing.

Patricia Kopta was in fact alive and living in the Caribbean, an Interpol officer and a staff member from the Puerto Rican care home told the Ross Township Police Department in early 2022. They believed she was the woman first taken into care in 1999.

On Thursday, Deputy Chief Brian Kohlhepp of the Ross Township police announced at a news conference that an investigation had confirmed that the woman in Puerto Rico was Patricia Kopta.

Patricia Kopta, 83, had become known in Pittsburgh as a street preacher, according to her family and reports from around the time of her disappearance.

Robert Kopta said Patricia had long expressed a desire to go to a warmer climate. He suspected that Patricia had traveled to Puerto Rico and ran ads in a local newspaper looking for her with no success, he said. For years, the family worried she’d turn up dead.

The case went cold for more than three decades, when an Interpol agent in Puerto Rico contacted the Ross Township police in 2022 with news of the care facility’s suspicions.

Robert Kopta, who did not remarry, said he was glad his ordeal was over.