Still no sign of woman missing for six days
By Alexia Saoulli
Daughters’ desperate search for 86-year-old mother
THE DAUGHTERS of an 86-year-old woman missing since last Wednesday said yesterday they beside themselves with worry and appealed for any information regarding their mother’s whereabouts.
Lydia Gulesserian disappeared from the Kaladjian old people’s home in Strovolos at 9am last Wednesday. Her two daughters, who have spent every waking hour scouring the streets for their beloved mother, are at their wits’ end over where she could be.
“We don’t know if she’s in somebody’s house. We’ve gone over every scenario. Maybe someday knocked her down and was too afraid to come forward and hid somewhere. You think of everything,” said her daughter, Arta Gulesserian.
She and her sister Lenia both live in the United States and had only just flown to Cyprus to settle their mother in at the care home before returning.
According to Arta, her mother liked her new abode and it was unlikely she’d been trying to “run away”.
“She didn’t take any of her things with her… She liked the place. There was no problem with that. She becomes disorientated once in a while. I don’t know if that’s happened while she was out walking,” she said.
What about trying to return home? Again that was unlikely, as she was a stranger to Nicosia and none of her old neighbours in Larnaca had heard from her.
“She doesn’t know Nicosia… We tried Larnaca and have spoken to everybody. She hasn’t been seen there either,” she said.
Arta said her mother, who speaks Armenian, Greek, Turkish and English, had been missing from the home for three hours before anybody had noticed she was gone.
“She doesn’t walk very fast so if she’d only been missing an hour we might have caught up to her. After three hours though, who knows where she is?”
She said she and her sister had talked to everybody in the area, including all the Sri Lankan housemaids who had promised to keep an eye out for the missing pensioner.
“We don’t know what else to do. I don’t know how an 86-year-old woman can survive six days and nights,” said Arta.
“We are supposed to be leaving in two weeks. We have to go back to work. I don’t know what we are going to do if we don’t find her. We have no answers. Every day we’ve been there scouring the streets.
“I don’t know what else to do. It is very, very upsetting just going up and down the street. We are in the area from 7am and sometimes stay till 10pm just trying to think where she could be,” she said.
Nicosia CID yesterday confirmed they were looking into the case. The question of why no sniffer dogs had been used in the search was not clear. Although there have been a few reported sightings of the 86-year-old, none have amounted to anything.
The two daughters have put up posters on lampposts and kiosks throughout the area in the hope that they will help lead to the discovery of their mother’s whereabouts.
n Anyone with any information should please contact the nearest police station or call Arta on 99-047800
Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2009
This lady is an old family friend of ours and very good friend of my mothers. Even though they are doing a very big search for her right now, I think she might have even crossed to the north side. Please keep an eye open for her. She is old and suffers memory problems and doesn't have her medication with her. I am waiting for someone to email me a picture of her and will post it as soon as I get it.
... my mother too, in her mid 80's, used to wander off (for hours) so I completely sympathise with the worry you are going through ...
