A Canadian man who vanished in 2012 has been found alive in the Amazonian rainforest, after what's believed to have been a 10,500-kilometre walk to South America.
Anton Pilipa, 39, was found in northern Brazil late last year, homeless, confused and without any identification.
He had been "wandering the towns and highways" in one of the most dangerous regions of the Amazon, according to a GoFundMe page launched by his family.
Pilipa disappeared in March of 2012, amid a prolonged struggle with schizophrenia. It's believed he walked most of the way from Scarborough, Ont., to South America.
Canadian-born police officer Helenice Vidigal led the effort to identify Pilipa on social media, as one of the few officers capable of communicating in English at the Porto Velho police department.
In a Facebook message posted on Thursday, Vidigal described meeting Pilipa with three other officers on a busy highway in Ji-Parana in the state of Rondonia on Nov. 28. She said the first thing she noticed about him was his fair features and his bare feet.
“Rondonia is a very hot place to go walking bare feet and without sun protection,” she wrote.
After speaking with him, Vidigal said she thought Pilipa showed signs of mental illness because his words didn’t make sense and he used a lot of profanity.
“The whole picture screamed just one word: Vulnerability! He needs help!” she explained.
Vidigal said she figured the man might be a missing Canadian based on some of the things he mentioned during their first conversation such as, the RCMP and asking if she was a francophone. Although Pilipa refused to speak about his family, she said she “sensed” there was a family out there looking for him and she set out to find them.
Vidigal posted a photo of Pilipa to her Facebook page and enlisted the assistance of her Canadian friends to try identifying him. She said she also sent a few emails to missing persons groups in Canada, the RCMP and the Canadian Embassy in Brazil.
At the end of December, the police officer stumbled across a missing person poster with Pilipa’s image from around the time of his disappearance online. She contacted the Twitter handle listed on the poster and received a response within minutes from Pilipa’s family friend. The friend put Vidigal in touch with Pilipa’s brother Stefan and they made arrangements for his return home.
Pilipa briefly escaped from police supervision in Porto Velho at the beginning of December. Eventually police were notified that he had been seen close to the BR-319 highway that runs through the Amazon rainforest. Vidigal said she was concerned for his safety during this time.
“Because up there big predators like jaguars, alligators, snakes among other deadly animals are real, we are talking about the Amazon Jungle,” she wrote.
Luckily, Pilipa was discovered in the city of Manaus on Jan. 3 where he was taken to a psychiatric hospital, according to Vidigal. His brother met him at the hospital and took him back to Canada.
Helping Pilipa reunite with his family was a “rewarding” experience, she said.
“After all this I am very happy to have helped reunite the family and also to have had the opportunity to give a little bit back to Canada’s people who have treated me so nicely over the years,” Vidigal wrote.
Stefan raised more than $12,500 through GoFundMe to pay for the flight to bring his brother home on Monday. Pilipa is now staying with his brother in Toronto while he recovers from the ordeal.
Pilipa was an "anti-poverty activist and member of radical communities" before his struggles with mental illness, Stefan said on the GoFundMe page.
