Missing California woman found in Maine shack

LOS ANGELES (AP) — An elderly Los Angeles woman whose neighbors believed had died was instead found in a rundown shack in Maine, where according to authorities an unrelated family took her after gaining her confidence and selling her house.

The Los Angeles Times reported (http://lat.ms/1wkHNvl ) Sunday on the story of Sarah Cheiker, who disappeared in 2008 at age 89 and was found in 2012 — alive but unwell in a dingy cabin in the town of Edgecomb where she apparently had been abandoned.

"It was a place I wouldn't have let my dog live in," said Det. Robert McFetridge of the sheriff's department in rural, coastal Lincoln County, Maine.

The only food was spoiled and the single light bulb had burned out.

As investigators tried to piece together Cheiker's story, they came across a missing person report filed with Los Angeles police by Cheiker's neighbor, Jim Caccavo.

He figured Cheiker had died and was amazed to get a 2012 call from an FBI agent in Boston that she was alive.

Caccavo recalled how, starting around 2006, a family of three people began to help her out with shopping and rides to the doctor. The neighbor said he doubted their motivations — they were unrelated to Cheiker, though they claimed to have known her deceased mother — and warned her to be careful.

And then, "all of a sudden, Sarah disappeared," Caccavo told The Associated Press by telephone Sunday. That was the fall of 2008.

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Missing California woman found in Maine shack