Vanished mother returns after 11 years

A US woman has re-emerged 11 years after walking away from her two children, her job and her life in Pennsylvania to hitchhike with strangers to Florida.

Police say Brenda Heist disclosed her identity last week in South Florida, saying she slept under bridges and scavenged food from restaurant rubbish bins to survive.

Her children were eight and 12 at the time she vanished. Now one’s a college graduate and the other is a student at West Chester University.

Heist had been going through a divorce when she disappeared in 2002.

After hearing that she had been turned down for housing assistance, she decided to leave, never contacting anyone.

In the years since she left, a court declared her legally dead and her husband remarried.

Heist’s mother says her daughter is doing OK but “had a real traumatic time”.

Jean Copenhaver, of Brenham, Texas, says she’s spoken to her 54-year-old daughter several times since Friday, when she turned herself in to police in Florida.

Copenhaver says Heist plans to live with her, but for now she’s staying with a brother in northern Florida.

Heist told police she made a spur-of-the-moment decision to join a group of homeless hitchhikers on their way to Florida.