On October 27th, Thalissa Van de Lagemaat, a resident of the Netherlands, was traveling around Spain when her phone and identification were stolen. At the time, Van de Lagemaat reached out to her family to let them know about the theft, telling her parents she’d be home on October 31st and that she was planning on hitchhiking back to the Netherlands.
October 31st came and went without further word from Thalissa, and understandably, her family and friends began to worry. As days passed without any sign of Van de Lagemaat since her initial call on October 27th, her loved ones grew frantic, eventually filing a missing persons report. By November 6th, news outlets across Europe—at the behest of loved ones and law enforcement—picked up the story of the missing woman, issuing urgent appeals for any leads on her whereabouts.
Frequently, stories like these have tragic endings. Luckily, this one doesn’t. Eleven days after Thalissa first checked in with her parents and seven days after she told them she’d be home from her travels, Van de Lagemaat has been confirmed as alive and well. After being MIA for a week to friends and family, the missing woman responded to the flood of concerned posts on her Facebook, responding with a link to a weeklong Halloween rave and stating that’d she’d been there since last week. It’s safe to say that her friends and family were pretty pissed.
Let this be a lesson to everyone: for fuck’s sake, check in with your loved ones when you say you will—lest you too become international news like Thalissa.
[H/T YourEDM]