Woman dies after two days in the woods

WASILLA — A mentally ill woman who wandered away from home over the weekend died of hypothermia after spending nearly 48 hours outside.

According to a Wasilla Police Department press release, shortly after 3:30 p.m. on Friday police were called to a home on Ashford Boulevard. There, Tanya Kochin told officers her mother, Valentina Kochin, 51, had left home on foot four hours prior and not returned.

Kochin said she and some friends had started looking for her mother and wanted police help.

“We went out and joined the search, brought a (police dog) out, they had some citizen groups or church groups that she was familiar with, they were out there searching,” said acting Wasilla police chief Craig Robinson. “Then we notified the hospitals, mental health facilities, that sort of thing, to see if she would show up.”

Alaska State Troopers flew over the area, searching from a plane. Police gave information to cab drivers, who, Robinson said, have proved to be very helpful in similar situations in the past.

“She was schizophrenic and afraid of anyone she didn’t know, so she would basically hide from you unless you were a family member,” Robinson said. “The woods are thick in the summer and you can be two or three feet away from somebody and not see them.”

Added to those complications was a language barrier — Kochin only spoke Russian. Robinson said a lot of similar cases are handled mostly by asking community members to be vigilant. He said the sergeant in charge of this search ramped up efforts to find her.

“I think he realized she was pretty vulnerable, given the fact that she couldn’t speak English to ask for help if she changed her mind and because of her mental health condition,” he said.

Robinson said officers searched until dark that first day and then off-and-on between other calls through the night and into the next day.

On Sunday Kochin finally turned up, Robinson said, in a swampy area behind a neighbor’s house right down the street from where she lives.

“It’s my understanding she was actually lying in water, how deep I don’t know,” he said.

Kochin was taken to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center with severe hypothermia. She died in the hospital. Robinson said that outcome was very unfortunate, but not typical of most cases where mentally vulnerable adults go missing.

“Most of them are Alzheimer’s patients and they just get lost. They wander away and get lost and can’t find their way home. They’re not actively resisting your efforts to find them,” he said. “Fortunately, the vast majority of those turn out with happy endings.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.