A woman who vanished more than a year ago during a cross-country road trip through Southern California has been found alive in Mexico, according to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s office announced Friday that Ganna Kovrizhynkh, 38, “likely had voluntarily crossed into Mexico.” Investigators made contact with her on August 7 and verified her identity, the office said. She is reported to be staying in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, hundreds of miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Kovrizhynkh was last heard from on July 5, 2025, as she toured San Diego County in her Jeep Grand Cherokee. A friend reported her missing after she failed to appear during what authorities described as a cross-country road trip. She had moved to Hallandale Beach, Florida, and was driving from Florida to California. Her vehicle and camper trailer were later found abandoned in Potrero, a rural community in San Diego County.
Her family last had contact with her the week before she disappeared. The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs) file said her mother received a photograph of a letter along with GPS coordinates from Potrero on the day she was last heard from. “The letter essentially provided instruction to give her personal assets to her mother,” the file stated.
Kovrizhynkh, who also went by the alias “Angel Volnaya,” had posted several videos to Facebook in the days before her disappearance. In one, she reads from the Bible with the caption: “Two commandments. No one escape. Who kill will die forever.” In the video, she says: “There is no way to escape. The punishment is coming. The rapture is coming. It is already on the earth. There is only a few years left… I’m a prophet.” Another video from the same day shows her at a church with supplies including water, oil, batteries, a walkie-talkie, and a gas mask.
At the time of her disappearance, Sergeant Jacob Klepach of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office told KNSD: “We believe she was just kind of touring the country and she left her vehicle in Potrero and never came back to her vehicle. We don’t really have any belief one way or another at this point if there is foul play involved or if she just strictly voluntarily left.”
The sheriff’s office has notified the Embassy of Ukraine of her whereabouts. It remains unclear why Kovrizhynkh crossed into Mexico or why she has not contacted loved ones in the past year. Her friends in Florida said they haven’t spoken to her in months.
An Instagram account under the alias “Angel Volnaya” appeared active before her disappearance. In it, she is tagged in photos of art exhibits and describes herself as a “psyhic-artist” and author of the book “Zeroing.” The book’s description reads: “Witness to God so as an entrance to a parallel world.”