On Sept. 14, one week after Hurricane Irma swept through the Caribbean, a 32-year-old teacher named Hannah Upp left her apartment on St. Thomas, in the Virgin Islands, to go for a morning swim at a nearby beach. According to a note she left for her friends, she then planned to go to the Virgin Islands Montessori School, where she worked as a teacher. It seemed as if she’d be home before the curfew the government had imposed in the wake of the storm.
Ms. Upp never came home. The next morning, a construction crew found her clothes and car keys by the beach; two days later, her car, with her cellphone, wallet and passport inside, was found in the beach’s parking lot. On Sept. 19, with Ms. Upp still missing as Hurricane Maria battered St. Thomas, her friends and family created a Find Hannah Upp Facebook page. “If any one sees Hannah, please go to her,” they wrote. “She has a rare dissociative amnesia disorder that may be in play. If so, she may not know where she is, or who she is.”
Although Ms. Upp’s disappearance is only one of many gut-wrenching stories to emerge from the devastated Caribbean in the past few weeks, it is one that may carry a sadly familiar ring for some New Yorkers.
Almost a decade ago, on Aug. 28, 2008, Ms. Upp, then a 23-year-old Spanish teacher, left her Hamilton Heights apartment to go jogging along Riverside Drive. About three weeks later, a keen-eyed Staten Island Ferry captain spotted her floating face down in the waters of New York Harbor.
After being pulled to safety, Ms. Upp was diagnosed with dissociative fugue, an extremely rare form of amnesia. Those with the condition, which is characterized in part by sudden and unexpected travel, “lose awareness for a lot of memory that has to do with their own identity and recent experience,” said Dr. David Spiegel, Willson professor and associate chairman of psychology and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. The condition’s most famous, albeit fictional, sufferer is Jason Bourne of the “Bourne Identity” franchise.
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“Normally, we forget things in little pieces,” Dr. Speigel said. “These people forget things in large pieces that involve what they’ve done for the last year or two years.”
During a lengthy interview with The New York Times five months after her ordeal, Ms. Upp recalled nothing of her travels throughout the city. “I went from going for a run to being in the ambulance,” she said. “It was like 10 minutes had passed. But it was almost three weeks.”
With the help of the police and security camera footage, Ms. Upp was able to retrace some of her journey, which included stops at Starbucks, the Midtown Apple store and several New York Sports Clubs. But she was left with plenty of questions.
“It’s weird,” she said at the time. “How do you feel guilty for something you didn’t even know you did? It’s not your fault, but it’s still somehow you. So it’s definitely made me reconsider everything. Who was I before? Who was I then — is that part of me? Who am I now?”
Ms. Upp left New York in 2010 and worked at a Quaker study and retreat center outside of Philadelphia, according to a newsletter written by her father. She then became a teaching assistant in Montessori schools, including one in Maryland. There, in September 2013, Ms. Upp experienced another dissociative fugue episode, this time disappearing for two days.She moved to St. Thomas the next year for a new job teaching 3- to 6-year-olds at the Virgin Islands Montessori School.
“Whenever we do a tour for a new family, the first classroom we visit is Hannah Upp’s,” said Michael Bornn, the head of the school. “She’s one heck of an example; she’s not just a Montessori teacher, she’s a passionate Montessori teacher.”
While Ms. Upp may be suffering another dissociative fugue episode, it is far from a foregone conclusion. She could be caught up in the chaos following the two storms. Members of her family, who declined to be interviewed, instead released a statement emphasizing the unknown nature of her present condition:
“Our beloved Hannah has disappeared. We do not know what has happened and we are hopeful that she will be found alive and well. Our thoughts and prayers are with Hannah and all those who continue to search tirelessly for her. We know our fear and uncertainty is shared by many others, and our hearts go out to all who wait.”
With much of St. Thomas and the surrounding region heavily damaged and many people still missing throughout the Caribbean, Ms. Upp’s disappearance “couldn’t have happened at a more difficult time,” Mr. Bornn said. Federal searchers and the Coast Guard are preoccupied with hurricane recoveries, he added, and Ms. Upp may not be “on the top of their radar.”
Some of Ms. Upp’s friends and colleagues have taken matters into their own hands: Jake Bradley, an emergency medical technician who has helped to lead the search for Ms. Upp, toldThe Virgin Islands Daily News that “we’ve done all the physical searching that I think we can do, other than having her posters put up everywhere.” The hope, he added, is that even if Ms. Upp is in a fugue state, she will see a poster and recognize that something is wrong.
Mr. Bornn, who has been in frequent communication with Ms. Upp’s family while trying to raise money to keep his school’s doors open, stressed that even in a fugue state, Ms. Upp would still be fully functional — just not as herself.
“That’s one of the frustrating things we haven’t been able to get across to the public,” Mr. Bornn said. “Just because she said ‘hi’ to you, don’t take her off your radar screen.
“We’re still optimistic,” he added. “We still have hope.”
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