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It took two years, but closure has finally come for the family of the homeless woman known as “Bus Stop Mary.”
The 67-year-old had for decades become widely recognizable to passersby as she walked along Nimitz Highway near Pearl Harbor. After she died on July 4, 2018, medical investigators couldn’t locate any family members.
Natalie Thiel was her name, although the military service members, who since the ’90s had driven and walked past her, never knew.
Even so, they had adopted her as one of their own, sharing food and water and even charging her cellphone.
They had various theories why she walked day and night along the fence line of the U.S. Pacific Fleet command headquarters, but her true story remained a mystery.
In February four New Jersey siblings, concerned they hadn’t heard for a long while from their half sister, Googled her and found a story with her name in it that appeared in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser in July 2018: “Life and death of ‘Bus Stop Mary’ shrouded in mystery.”
They were shocked that the woman, who had also come to be known as “Crazy Mary,” could be their older half sister — a once aspiring actress living in Manhattan who married an airline pilot, moved to Australia, then somehow ended up in Hawaii.
Her brother, Michael Przywara, contacted the Star- Advertiser in late February asking whether any photos were ever taken of the homeless woman, to see whether she resembled his sister. He sent his 1994 wedding photo, which captured Thiel, then 41, her dark hair in an updo, looking stylish in a pale pink outfit.
In March the family called the Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office, and investigators confirmed by her birth date she was indeed their long-lost sister and that she died of natural causes.
Because medical investigators could not find next of kin in the weeks following her death, the case was sent to the Health Department, which approved her classification as unclaimed, and her remains were cremated Aug. 29, 2018.
The family began arrangements to have her cremated remains sent home. But at the time, the pandemic was flaring up, and they didn’t hear from the agency for months, so they contacted the office again.
Thiel’s sister Diane Vallandingham received the ashes in September, more than two years after Thiel’s death.
Now after 26 or so years, Thiel is home again.
“I feel she’s home,” Vallandingham said. “I feel that she’d be happy to know her siblings care enough, that somebody cares enough to bring her home. I wish she would have known how much she was loved. … Life’s handed her a lot of unfairness. She wasn’t dealt a very good deal.”
“It’s so sad,” said Vallandingham, 61. “They called her Crazy Mary.”
Had they known she was living on the streets, any one of the siblings would have taken her in and cared for her, she said.
“As long as I live I will probably hear her voice in my head urging me to try to understand,” Vallandingham said in a text to the Star- Advertiser. “This should not have been, so so sad, no one should be homeless.”
“Family is to accept and appreciate the gifts that every person has to offer.”
Vallandingham says her sister was artistic, and she still has a 1987 painting of Thiel’s that could be of a beach in Hawaii, with a palm tree in the foreground and an island in the background.
“If it was not for (the Star-Advertiser) story, we would not be able to bring Natalie home and put her to rest where she belongs with her mother! Thank you kindly!!”
Przywara said Thiel, born in Woodbury, N.J., had been an aspiring actress who lived in Manhattan for years.
“She told me she was getting older and wanted to find herself a pilot and settle down,” Przywara said. “Sure enough, she found an airline pilot from Qantas within a couple of years.”
Vallandingham said Thiel met and quickly wed the pilot in May 1992 in Cherry Hill, N.J., then moved to Australia.
She speculates that the woman from South Jersey may have experienced culture shock in Australia, and the couple hadn’t known each other long before marrying.
“They must have split up and she was making her way back, and ended up in Hawaii.”
Przywara said he got a call for help from Thiel in the mid-’90s, and she told him a different story.
“She followed a band from Australia who had a gig in Hawaii, and the band stranded her there,” Przywara said. “They left her there with no identification, nothing.”
Thiel told him she had gotten into trouble at the Honolulu airport after sharing a cab with a man, who left his golf clubs in the taxi.
“She grabbed the guy’s golf clubs and went to find him,” but they mistakenly thought she had stolen them and there was a warrant out for her arrest, Przywara said.
Hawaii court records show Thiel was arrested in 1996 on third-degree theft, a petty misdemeanor. The case haunted her for years. When she failed to appear for court hearings, the court issued bench warrants for her arrest. Finally, in 2002 a judge recalled the bench warrants and closed the case.
Thiel had called her brother to ask for help in getting her birth certificate in order to get a replacement ID. So he went to Woodbury, but officials would not give it to him.
“That’s one of the last times I heard from her,” Przywara said. “It wasn’t that she was missing. I don’t think she wanted help.”
Przywara tried calling police to explain she was not quite right, but he could not help her.
Family members suspected she had some sort of mental illness.
They had caught early glimpses that something was wrong.
Przywara said when he was working for a New Jersey casino, Thiel asked him to introduce her to Donald Trump because she wanted a job as a psychic, then years later claimed she was working in Hawaii as a military psychic.
At 17, Debbi Przywara visited her big sister in Manhattan, and recalls the first time she saw her “do something odd.”
She awoke early one morning to Thiel screaming out her seventh-floor window saying, “‘I saw that. I saw that.’ The next day, she was dressed all incognito, in a rain hat, raincoat with the collar pulled up, and sunglasses.”
The bad hand Thiel was dealt began early in her life. Their mother, Suzanne King, was 16 years old when she was pregnant with Natalie. Their grandfather insisted the young man, whose last name was Thiel, marry their mother, but he soon left, the family said.
Their mother remarried Eugene Przywara. But when she died at age 29, Natalie was just 12 years old and torn from her immediate family. Their maternal grandmother insisted Thiel live with her since Przywara was not her biological father, her siblings said.
Thiel’s four siblings were initially split up after their mother’s death, but their father got them all back and raised them.
The family plans to bury Thiel’s ashes in a grave next to her mother.
“I’m glad she’s here,” her sister said. “She’ll be glad to be with her mother.”
The Christmas following her death, Thiel was one of 68 homeless individuals who died on Oahu in 2018 and were commemorated at Central Union Church in its annual “Blue Christmas” event, her name inscribed on an ornament hung on a Christmas tree.
This Christmas, Thiel will be home in New Jersey, buried near her mother, her name engraved on a gravestone.
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November 16, 2020 at 05:06PM
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Homeless woman called ‘Bus Stop Mary’ identified by her family in New Jersey - Honolulu Star-Advertiser
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