text: Close Get email notifications on Suzanne Carlson daily! 
   
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   Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. ||||| “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. 
   
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   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.” 
   
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   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, told The 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.” ||||| A young schoolteacher with a rare form of amnesia disappeared in the U.S. Virgin Islands on September 14, and remained missing as Hurricane Maria struck the region. 
   
   Hannah Upp was last seen leaving her apartment on St. Thomas about 8 a.m. last Thursday. Her car was later found in a parking lot at Sapphire Beach, where locals often go to swim, and her sandals, sarong and dress were found on the beach, her colleagues tell Newsweek. 
   
   Upp has a rare form of amnesia called dissociative fugue—best known as the medical condition that affected the character Jason Bourne—which can cause people to forget who they are for days or months at a time. 
   
   The 32-year-old went missing in similar circumstances twice before. Upp went for a run in Manhattan in 2008 and disappeared for almost three weeks before she was found floating in the water off the southern point of the island, with no memory of the preceding weeks. She disappeared again for about two days in 2013 in Maryland, again telling police after she was found that she had no memory of where she had been or what she had done while she was missing. Facebook, courtesy Maggie Guzman 
   
   Her latest disappearance is especially troubling because it comes while St. Thomas rebuilds from Hurricane Irma and as residents sheltered from Hurricane Maria late Tuesday and early Wednesday. 
   
   “Last night we had six hours of heavy, heavy rain and winds, so I’m worried that she was hiding out somewhere that wasn’t safe,” Maggie Guzman, a friend and fellow teacher, tells Newsweek. “There’s a lot of things to worry about. But my hope is that she found somewhere safe to hide.” 
   
   The search for Upp has been complicated and slowed by the hurricane and by poor cellphone service on the island. Upp’s colleagues filed a police report and the U.S. Coast Guard searched the ocean, but the Coast Guard had to call off the search as Hurricane Maria approached the island, according to Michael Bornn, the head of school at Virgin Islands Montessori School. 
   
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   “We’re ducking between Category 5 hurricanes,” says Bornn, who described Upp as an energetic and loving teacher who taught 3- to 5-year-old children in both English and Spanish. “It’s hard to find her in the best of situations, and it’s even harder now with the hurricane chaos.” REUTERS/Jonathan Drake 
   
   Guzman first noticed Upp was missing on Friday, when she didn’t show up at school—where Guzman and other teachers were working to rebuild. Guzman called Upp’s roommates and friends but nobody had seen her, and Upp didn’t answer her phone. 
   
   “She may be confused and disoriented or not know who she is. Remember her face and look out for her,” Guzman wrote in a post on the Facebook group “What’s Going on St. Thomas,” which storm survivors have used to exchange information and search for missing people. Guzman later posted a rumor that Upp was sighted at a bar called Rum Hut—wearing a dirty tank top and a bandage on her arm—in an attempt to find out whether anyone else had seen her there. (Another resident posted that the woman in the tank top was a friend and not Upp.) 
   
   Upp called her mother Tuesday after a staff meeting at Virgin Islands Montessori School and said she was safe and planned to stay on the island. “According to her mother, she sounded coherent,” Bornn, the head of school, tells Newsweek, adding that Thursday morning she left a note for friends saying she was going for a swim at Sapphire Beach and would then go to school. Photo courtesy Beverly Millard 
   
   “To me, that was the last conscious act that we know of,” says Bornn, adding that Upp’s colleagues and friends have hung paper fliers around the island and have checked the hospital and shelters. 
   
   Hurricane Irma hit St. Thomas last week and devastated the U.S. territory of about 50,000 people, tearing the roof off the hospital, destroying many buildings and killing at least four people. 
   
   Stressful situations can trigger the symptoms of dissociative amnesia, which include “difficulty remembering important information about one’s self,” and can last from minutes to years, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Facebook, Courtesy Maggie Guzman 
   
   When Upp was missing in 2008, police reports said she spent a lot of time in places like Riverside Drive, which overlooks the Hudson River, according to The New York Times. After she was found, she said her attraction to the area made sense—an answer that may also shed light on why she found her way to Sapphire Beach almost 10 years later. “Not only is it one of my favorite places, but there’s something soothing about the sound of water and just not feeling trapped in the concrete jungle,” she told the newspaper in 2009. 
   
   Upp’s friends worry she drowned at Sapphire Beach, was the victim of a crime or was once again struck by amnesia and is now wandering around the island, confused and hiding. Guzman says: “We’re all hoping it’s the third thing, because that’s more likely that she’s OK.”
target: – "It's definitely made me reconsider everything. Who was I before? Who was I then—is that part of me? Who am I now?" The New York Times reports Hannah Upp, a 32-year-old teacher in St. Thomas, disappeared Sept. 14, a week after Hurricane Irma hit the Virgin Islands. Her clothes, car, keys, cellphone, passport, and wallet were found at a beach where she had gone for a swim. Upp was still missing five days later when Hurricane Maria battered the Caribbean. Upp is far from the only person missing in the wake of the storms, but her case is unique in that she may not even know she's missing. Upp has dissociative fugue, a very rare type of amnesia made famous by the fictional Jason Bourne. "Normally, we forget things in little pieces," Dr. David Spiegel says. "These people forget things in large pieces that involve what they've done for the last year or two years." In 2008, Upp was found floating face down in New York Harbor by a ferry captain. She had been missing for three weeks at that point and remembered nothing of that period. "I went from going for a run to being in the ambulance," Upp said after her rescue. Newsweek reports Upp disappeared again in 2013 in Maryland—this time for two days. Now friends and family are hoping Upp has once again entered a fugue state and didn't drown or fall victim to a crime. "My hope is that she found somewhere safe to hide," friend Maggie Guzman says. Official resources are stretched thin responding to the two hurricanes, so Upp's friends have been searching for her and putting up posters, hoping she sees one. "If she’s in her fugue state, it would at least get her to the point where she realizes something’s wrong," friend Jake Bradley tells the Virgin Islands Daily News.