The Mystery of L : Deaf Woman Is Found Wandering in Port Hueneme

Deaf, mute and illiterate, a young woman was found wandering the streets of Port Hueneme, posing a mystery that Ventura County shelter officials said Friday they cannot solve.

“She has been abandoned,” said Marti Ruble, manager of the Women’s Lighthouse shelter in Oxnard. “She does not know her name, she does not know how to communicate much.”

Unable to explain her identity or show the way home, the slim, smiling, curly-haired woman on Friday became one of the first residents of the newly opened shelter.

“Can you imagine what a lonely feeling it must be?” said Carol Roberg, associate director of the shelter. “She can neither read nor write nor speak.”

Using a deaf Latino member of the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness as an interpreter, shelter officials believe they have squeezed out a few scraps of information:

Her name begins with an L.

She is sweet-tempered, well-groomed, trusting--and quite lost.

She came to California by airplane.

She recently gave birth to a baby girl.

She wears a single cultured pearl pendant on a gold chain and three rings on her left hand: a filigree silver ring with an onyx stone, a man’s pewter school ring reading “Inst. Bancario Comm. Latino Americano,” and a gold ring with white stones shaped in the letter S, which may have been the baby’s initial.

She recently wore white in a church ceremony--possibly a baptism or wedding.

She is wary of men.

Authorities met the woman when a citizen brought her into the Port Hueneme Police Department on Monday because she was “walking around acting like she was lost,” said Officer Darin Schindler.

Trying to interview her in English, Spanish and the American Sign Language for the deaf, police could learn very little. All they knew was that her clothes were clean and she was carrying about $10 in American currency, Schindler said.

“She seemed to be fine, so after about five hours we had to let her go,” he said.

Later that evening, Schindler was on patrol when he spotted the woman again, dancing in the median of Ventura Road near Pleasant Valley Road.

“I don’t know what the deal is with her,” he said. “At times she’ll try to talk to you using body language, but she was acting real strange. She kept walking into traffic, causing traffic problems.”

More attempts at communication were fruitless: “We’d write down things like, ‘What’s your name?’ and she’d write gibberish, numbers and letters that don’t mean anything,” Schindler said.

Police finally turned her over to Ventura County mental health workers, who kept her for observation at their Ventura inpatient unit. The workers had a doctor examine her at Ventura County Medical Center, where it was determined that she had given birth. However, they later released her after ruling she was not a danger to herself or others.

Officials from the mental health department and the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness arranged for the woman to enter the shelter Friday.

On Friday, officials from the council on deafness interviewed her.

They tried hand signs in English, American Sign Language and Spanish, “and none of them could make any sense,” said Barbara Meehan, an adviser for the group’s Ventura County chapter.

“Her signs are a combination of Mexican signs and home signs,” Meehan said. “Home signs are made up in the home so only people in the home can understand them.”

On Friday, Women’s Lighthouse workers began calling newspapers and television stations, hoping that someone who knows her will see her picture.

Until then, the woman with no name waits in the shelter, cuddling and patting a stuffed white teddy bear they have given her.

She sways back and forth for minutes at a time, cradling it in her arms, her gaze distant and her chin sunk into its fur.

Then she brightens, beaming broadly, and tosses it lightly into the air, focusing on it like a mother on her child.