[imagesource: 24sata]

On September 12, people fishing on the northern Adriatic island of Krk found a woman.

She was seen wrapped in a sheet on jagged rocks close to the sea in an area of the island where bears are known to roam.

The woman spoke perfect English but had no memory of her name or where she had come from.

For 10 days, the mystery remained unsolved, with her picture spread far and wide in extensive media coverage.

Finally, it was announced yesterday that Croatian police had confirmed the identity of the woman, thanks in large part to two Los Angeles residents.

Here’s The Daily Beast:

Nina Smidt told The Daily Beast that the scratched-up woman pictured in photos that flashed around the globe this week was Daniela Adamcova, who had worked as an artisan at a company where she was a manager in 2015.

She had been placed there by a non-profit that helps the homeless, Smidt said.

Adamcova is 57, and at the time she started working out of a warehouse known as Second Space in downtown Los Angeles, she had been living on the street.

Landlord Tyler Madsen confirmed that Adamcova was allowed to live rent-free in the warehouse so that she could save money.

It was quite a fall from grace for a woman who, according to a 2008 profile on her in her native Slovakia, had once been a successful jewellery designer whose creations had been worn by the likes of Brigitte Bardot and Diana Ross.

The story says she left what is now Slovakia in 1984 (after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Slovakia became independent from Czechoslovakia) to pursue a career in jewelry design in America when she was 19…

She told the outlet she wanted to go to America, which she called the “land of unlimited possibilities.”

She took on housekeeping and childcare jobs and eventually started working for a real estate agency, she told the outlet.

From there, she saved enough money to study fashion design and specialised in handmade jewellery.

As her skills improved, her work caught the eye of people in the movie industry, and Adamcova said she sold pieces to Friends cast members, the stars of Melrose Place, and Barbra Streisand.

She returned to Slovakia in 2000, but said in the 2008 interview that she was longing to return to the US, which she later did, although she was homeless by 2015.

Despite piecing together all of this, there are some questions still left unanswered:

…officials still do not know why or how she ended up in Krk—or how she survived in an area teeming with animal predators. There is also no clear answer why no one had reported her missing or was searching for her. Her name does not appear on any international missing person’s lists.

Image: HGSS

She was severely dehydrated and emaciated and had bloody scabs from deep scratches on her face, but she did not have cuts on her feet as would be expected on someone who came to the island over the rocky shoreline.

Tourists who say they met and spoke with her on September 9, three days before she was found, said she spoke with them at length, and feared going into a 14-day quarantine if she returned to Slovakia.

When (or if) all the gaps are filled in, we should have a more complete picture of why and how she ended up on Krk.

Until then, all we know for sure is that she had struggled in the years since becoming a jeweller to the stars.

[source:dailybeast]