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'Missing' USF student found safeBy LINDA GIBSON and MELANIE AVE © St. Petersburg Times, published January 14, 2001 TAMPA -- The parents of a 20-year-old University of South Florida student missing since Tuesday finally got the phone call they had been hoping for on Saturday night. Their daughter, Phiola Jean Patterson of Lutz, had been found unharmed at an apartment near 113th Avenue in Tampa. Their relief, however, was tempered by bewilderment. "She says she was with a friend and she didn't know people were looking for her," said her mother, Elaine Patterson. "She was chillin'; that was the word she used," said her father, Leroy Patterson. "I'm elated in one sense but disappointed in another." For four days, her parents, sisters, brother and friends had been passing out fliers with Phiola's photograph, racking their brains about what might have happened to her and hoping she had not become the victim of a crime. On Tuesday about 8:30 p.m., she had called her boyfriend, Shaun Higgins, after her class ended on USF's St. Petersburg campus, telling him she was on her way back to his house or her parents. But at 10 p.m., she called Higgins again and said her car was overheating somewhere off Interstate 275. She said she had walked about three blocks from her stalled 1991 gray Saturn to a pay phone. "She sounded calm," said Higgins. "We go through this stuff all the time with the car breaking down." "He told her to let it cool down and then try and start it again," said her father, Leroy Patterson, a real estate investor. "She never called back." Hillsborough County sheriff's spokesman Rod Reder announced about 8:25 p.m. Saturday that Phiola Jean Patterson and her car had been located and that she was unharmed. He released no further information and said no charges were expected to be filed. Friends and family say Patterson is reliable and compassionate. They didn't think she was the kind of person to disappear without telling anyone. The 20-year-old woman works part time as a receptionist at a north Tampa chiropractor's office, attends classes at the University of South Florida and wants to work someday with mentally handicapped children.
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From the Times |
