The woman had lived in Zaragoza since the 1980s and, over the years, contact with her family had gradually dwindled until disappearing completely in 2022. Her 16 nieces and nephews, spread across different parts of the world, kept photographs, postcards and old correspondence and spent years trying to trace her, without obtaining a clear answer about her whereabouts.
One of them finally decided to travel from San Francisco to Zaragoza to look for her personally. For several days, he visited agencies and institutions in an effort to reconstruct his aunt's last known movements, but he also got no results. He was eventually advised to file a report and, on the night of June 23, went to the Delicias Police Station with the little information the family still had.
A nephew traveled from the United States to Zaragoza to search for his aunt. Photo: National Police
FOUND WITHIN HOURS
Early the following morning, the case reached the Missing Persons Unit of the Superior Police Headquarters of Aragon. The officers began retracing the woman's trail and, within hours, managed to locate her at a nursing home in Zaragoza, where she was being well cared for. In what felt like the ending of a fairy tale, the news brought nearly four years of uncertainty to an end for a family that had been seeking answers from different countries.
The speed of the response particularly surprised the nephew, who later sent an emotional letter of thanks to the director general of the National Police. In it, he summed up the contrast between years of searching and the resolution of the case with a striking phrase: “Months of effort. Multiple institutions. Weeks of dead ends. And then: twenty-four hours.” He also acknowledged that he had come to think the concerns of a foreign family would hardly be among the police's priorities. “I was wrong, and I am glad to acknowledge it,” he wrote.
Excerpt from the letter of thanks to the National Police
“ZARAGOZA POLICE FOUND OUR AUNT WHEN NO ONE ELSE COULD”
The letter also includes explicit thanks to the officers at the Delicias Police Station. “Zaragoza police found our aunt when no one else could,” the family member wrote, emphasizing that their work finally allowed the entire family to learn that she was alive and being cared for. The nephew returned from the United States to Zaragoza this Monday to meet Elena and Lara, the two police officers involved in locating her, and thank them in person for their work.
