STANSBURY PARK -- The Tooele County Sheriff's Office is asking for help from the public in locating a missing 16-year-old girl.
Luba Anderson is believed to be in danger because she is bipolar and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, which is the result of her abusive and neglectful childhood in Russia. She was in the full throes of a manic episode when she took the family car and left on Saturday afternoon.
Luba was spotted at the Taylorsville Wal-Mart just a few hours after she left. She gave a young man there her number.
Then on Monday morning around 6:30, Salt Lake City police called to say they'd found the family car abandoned and out of gas. "She was last known to be [around] North Temple and 9th West," her father, Eric Anderson, said.
Eric describes his daughter as about 5 feet tall with an athletic build, a dark completion and dark hair. "She has a distinctive mole on the right side of her nose, and she has green eyes," he said.
He is especially concerned because of her condition. She needs her medication, and because she is in a manic episode, he says she can become quite irrational and unpredictable.
Eric is worried she may be looking for drugs. "She's had drug problems in the past, since we brought her here from Russia and got her in some treatment programs," he said. "We're at our wits' ends."
He believes he's not getting much help from area police departments because his daughter is a runaway, but he believes that her situation is different and puts her in more danger.
"She doesn't have the street savvy to buy a soda pop," Eric explained. "She's from a tiny village in southern Russia. They had a one-room schoolhouse. The old man across the street from the orphanage was plowing his turnip patch with a swaybacked old horse and a rusty home-made plow. … Luba knows literally nothing about day-to-day survival in a city."
If you have seen Luba or know where she is, contact the Tooele County Sheriff's Office at 435-882-5600.
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Story compiled with contributions from Cleon Wall and Becky Bruce.
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