Help Sought in Identifying Asian Woman

Mental health authorities in Ventura County are asking the public’s help in identifying a woman who was found a month ago wandering on a freeway ramp in Thousand Oaks.

The woman appears to be of Asian descent in her mid-40s and is about 4 foot 9 inches tall. She has brown hair, brown eyes and weighs 123 pounds, said Patricia Kosich, a county social worker.

The woman was brought to the county’s mental health unit in Ventura on July 5 after sheriff’s deputies found her walking on the Ventu Park Road ramp to the Ventura Freeway, Kosich said. “She had $5.58 in her pocket, an apple and a bag of popcorn,” Kosich said. But she appeared to be in good health.

“We believe she was dumped,” said Dr. Zhong-Yi Liu, a county psychiatrist.

Liu says the woman suffers from elective mutism. That is when a person chooses to be mute as a way of dealing with some sort of trauma. But Liu said she apparently has tried at least once to identify herself.

Elective mutism is common among women in southwest Vietnam, said Liu, who once practiced in China and came in contact with many such patients.

Treatment starts with the person responding to verbal suggestions. But that has not worked in this case because the woman appears to be deaf as well, Liu said.

“There is no cultural barrier, she’s not mentally retarded and there is no language barrier,” the doctor said. “She chooses not to speak.”

The woman can clean herself, cleans up the dining area after others and can draw if shown how, Kosich said.

Since she arrived at the county clinic, the woman has made only one sound using her vocal cords. “She has a language,” Liu said, “but what she said was not meaningful.”

She did write two words--Fat Phn, and Asian linguists have been brought in to decipher their meaning. They have not been able to verify the origin of the words or if they are even words at all, Liu said.

The woman could be Vietnamese, Liu said, and he suspects “Phn” is actually the woman’s attempt to write her last name--Phan. Phan is the most-used last name in Vietnam, Liu said. The FBI ran a nationwide check on the woman’s fingerprints but could not come up with a match, authorities said.

People who can identify the woman are asked to call Ventura County Mental Health at 652-6729.