Tragic twist as missing mum is found alive in New York

A mum who went missing months ago has been found “safe” in New York City – but devastated loved ones say the story does not have a happy ending.

A Colorado mum reported missing two months ago was recently found “safe” in Manhattan – but the story does not yet have a happy ending.

Loved ones say Alyssa Olivier’s story is a family’s worst nightmare: she’s suffered an apparent mental break and is homeless – and possibly violent – on the streets of New York City.

Not only does her heartbroken family want her, so does the NYPD, for allegedly kicking a stranger in the head, said a private eye assigned to find her.

“We are terrified,” Alyssa’s mum, Kristie Olivier, 68, told the New York Post.

“She is in a state where she’s not entirely coherent. … We don’t know if we are dealing with a health issue, a mental health issue or something else.

“She’s been without any means of support for two months. Who knows what she has encountered on the streets?”

Alyssa left her home in Denver driving a beat-up 2000 Suzuki Grand Vitara, which was found in NYC.

Alyssa left her home in Denver, Colorado two months ago driving a beat-up 2000 Suzuki Grand Vitara to visit her great aunt in Kansas, where she was born and raised. From there, she drove to New York.

It was familiar ground for the 39-year-old, an art graduate from New York City’s Cooper Union college who still has friends in the city.

Family members said they stopped getting texts two days after Alyssa’s August 2 arrival in NYC, and filed a missing-persons report in Colorado later the same month after her city friends said they’d not heard from her.

Alyssa is separated from her husband and has a 10-year-old daughter, Georgia, her mum said. When Alyssa left Colorado, the estranged couple had been preparing to sell their house. Alyssa had been living with her parents, helping out her mum, who has lymphoma, by fixing meals, doing laundry, driving her to appointments, and “little things around the house”.

“She was an artist,” Kristie Olivier said.

“She painted, she worked with fabric … textiles. She has her own website.”

Alyssa Olivier’s mother says she suffered a brain injury as a child.

On the homepage of the website, Alyssa Olivier writes cryptically, “Our time is short here/so many things are broken/and there is never the right needle for mending/looking at the sink/I forget to water the plants/and I miss her if she is gone for a moment so/I am pouring out my mind here/to give myself some room.”

“She is very spiritual,” her mum said.

“She meditates, she does yoga and has helped a host of friends make sound decisions in their own lives.”

The mum said Alyssa seemed a bit “overwhelmed by so many life changes” while living with her, but was not unravelling.

Her car, with the battery dead and fuel tank empty, was found on August 9 on Third Avenue, between 20th and 21st Streets, a former Cooper Union classmate of Alyssa’s, Sophie, told Patch. Her purse and electronics were still inside, but her wallet was gone.

“The car was found parked in a two-hour parking zone and sat there for a month and never moved. … We had credit card receipts,” Kristie Olivier said. “She visited an Asian restaurant, a pizza place.

“Someone found (her wallet) and contacted her. She never claimed the wallet. … That’s the part we don’t know. Did she get assaulted somewhere?”

“She had a brain injury as a kid,” the concerned mother added, saying when Alyssa was six doctors diagnosed her with Henoch-Schonlein purpura, a rare disorder causing inflammation and bleeding in the small blood vessels.

To this day, “she still gets headaches and her joints and face will swell up,” her mum said.

A missing person poster calling for information about the young mum.

Rock Pereira, a retired NYPD detective hired as a private investigator by the family, said nobody heard from Alyssa Olivier until September 29, when she tried to call her husband at 6.22am from a kiosk at 17th Street and Sixth Avenue, and then again about 90 minutes later from Amsterdam Avenue and West 88th Street on the Upper West Side.

College friends and the private investigator followed up leads on Alyssa, who is 160cm tall and 52kg.

Mr Pereira said he recovered video footage of Alyssa lashing out at two people walking on the sidewalk on Amsterdam Avenue between West 88th and 89th Streets.

On October 14, an anonymous caller responding to Alyssa’s missing-person poster told Mr Pereira they spotted her with a white kitten on East 10th Street.

Mr Pereira told the Post he and Alyssa’s friend then found the missing woman near Tompkins Square Park that same day.

“She looked tired. She was carrying three bags and she definitely looked homeless,” Mr Pereira said.

Alyssa declined medical attention and refused to go with Mr Pereira. The private investigator gave her $100 and a list of “important phone numbers” and told her “people are worried about you, including your mum”.

“I hope she seeks medical treatment. She needs the help,” he said last week.

Alyssa was spotted on a street in New York City. File image. Picture: iStock

“She can hold a conversation and maintain a conversation,” said Mr Pereira, who spoke with Alyssa for “10 to 12 minutes” after locating her.

“The entire situation is delicate. But she does need help,” he said.

“I’d like to see her get a hold of her friends in New York,” her mother said. “There were people from coast to coast helping in the search for Alyssa. They still are helping her get into a situation where she is no longer homeless. She is out there on the streets carrying around a bag and a small cat.

“We are terrified. We know the state of the streets in New York and the weather is going to turn. This has baffled us.”

Meanwhile, NYPD detectives have an open case in the 13th Precinct in Midtown for an alleged October 12 assault, the NYPD and Mr Pereira told the Post.

A 43-year-old woman told police that while she was walking on First Avenue a woman kicked her in the face, “causing pain and a bloody nose”.

The private investigator noted that if Alyssa gets arrested in the assault, odds are she will end up getting a court attendance notice and will be released.

Mr Pereira spent this week searching for the Colorado mum in Tompkins Square Park, Union Square, Stuyvesant Town and the Upper West Side without luck.

“This is really a sad case,” the retired NYPD Detective said. “For the sake of her family and friends and the citizens of New York City and for Alyssa, it would be best that she’s found again.”

“Heartbroken doesn’t quite get there,” Kristie Olivier told the Post on Friday. “I’m crushed.”

This article originally appeared on The Post and was reproduced with permission