YOU MAY REMEMBER ‘Sam’, though she isn’t able to remember herself. She’s the fifty-something woman who was found recently in California with both severe ovarian cancer and an acute case of amnesia.
Being unable to remember who she was or where she was from, the hospital where Sam was taken for treatment set up a Facebook page looking to identify both her and her family.
The story quickly went viral with both the FBI and Interpol lending a hand to boot.
And now the story has taken a happy twist – after her story was posted on Facebook by NBC reporter Stephen Luke and subsequently shared more than 200,000 times ‘Sam’ has been identified and it seems she has a family.
Sam, whose real name is Ashley Manetta, was spotted by her nephew. She’s a 54-year-old Pennsylvania native who had been living in Southern California for a number of years.
She is unmarried, but has sisters living in both Colorado and Maryland. They lost track of her when she moved to California. Apparently she had lived a ‘free-spirited’ life and was hard to keep track of.
“They didn’t think it odd as I travelled a lot,” she told NBC.
Initially it was surmised that Sam / Ashley was Australian as she had a hint of an accent. The story has been shared particularly strongly there as a result.
As it happens she isn’t Australian, but she does have a long history of visiting there.
It should be much easier to find people than this; I mean this had to go on for four months,” said Ashley.
It seems her next move will see her pause her chemotherapy programme so she can move to Maryland to be with her sister and continue her treatment there.
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