ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — “She was 22. There's so much of life she's missed, spent 13 years. That's huge,” Rene Nimbach said.
Rene Nimbach says her baby sister, Laura Nimbach, was a model student, amazing daughter and fantastic sibling. She wanted to study nursing. So after high school in Michigan, she moved to Florida. But a crash changed her path.
"She got in a car accident and was prescribed pills that eventually she became addicted to," Nimbach said. "We didn't know a lot about that."
Rene says things began to spiral out of control.
Laura with addicted to oxycodone. She was in and out of women’s shelters, the victim of domestic violence and got help at drug rehab centers. But Laura always kept in contact with her family. That is, until Feb. 17th, 2009.
“Is she out there somewhere living in fear wondering why we're not looking for her wondering why we haven't found her?” Her sister, Rene Nimbach, said. “Does she have too much shame to come home? For whatever situation she may have put herself in? You know, is she still stuck? Is she being held somewhere? Is she sold into sex trafficking? Like, it never ever ends.”
Laura was last seen sleeping behind a building on 49th street near Memorial Park Cemetery in St. Petersburg. An officer found her and told her about local homeless shelters, her family said.
“There really is no answers ever and you kind of don't know what direction to ever go in and where to stop," Rene Nimbach said. "It changed all of our lives. It changed my life completely. Completely you know, it's a loss definitely in one you can't recover and you don't know if we kind of don't know what to do.”