Woman Found in California Has No Idea Who She Is

A woman who claims she has no idea who she is says she hopes to reconnect with family and a mystery man she may have loved before she dies of cancer. The woman—who goes by Sam and is believed to be in her 50s—was barely conscious when she was found on the streets of Carlsbad, Calif., on Feb. 1 with no identification and no memory of how she got there. Doctors have since discovered Sam, who sometimes speaks with an Australian or English accent, suffers from stage-three ovarian cancer. She says they told her a "volleyball-sized tumor" on her ovary may have caused her amnesia, per the Sydney Morning Herald. "I just feel like there's a thick fog over my mind, my memory, over my brain," she tells NBC San Diego. "I can't remember anything," she adds, though she says she feels a connection to Australia and Hawaii, Mashable reports. She also dreams of a man who might be her husband.

After months of uncertainty for Sam, who's living in a retirement community, tips are now flooding in, due in part to a Facebook group set up by nurses to help her out. One woman in Carlsbad tells NBC San Diego she knows the mysterious woman from a Bible study at a Catholic church on the same corner on which Sam was found. "She went by Samantha to us," the woman says, noting she thought she was homeless. "She was here from Australia. She referred to Australia back then." Another woman in Utah says she knew Sam by another name some 20 years ago in Arizona and says she's an "eccentric" American who sometimes used an English accent. When she called police yesterday, a woman said, "Sam had already been identified." Police then directed questions to the FBI. A rep from the bureau says vaguely that new information should help produce Sam's real identity soon. (An alleged amnesiac reportedly found his family after turning up in a snowdrift.)