WELCOME BACK?

Woman Returns After Missing 11 Years

Had been declared legally dead.

A Pennsylvania woman resurfaced in Florida on Wednesday, 11 years after she went missing—and years after being declared legally dead. Brenda Heist, 53, told police that she left in 2002 while she was going through a nasty divorce and had just been turned down for housing assistance. While crying in a park, she was befriended by two women and a man who invited her to go along on a monthlong hitchhiking trip through Florida. Heist never returned, and in the years since, she lived for seven years with a man in a camper, but has spent the past two years homeless. When she met with police earlier this week, she apologized for what she did to her family. She apparently turned herself in because she was tired of living on the run.