A 15-year-old girl missing for six weeks after she vanished from outside her school has miraculously been found alive 500 miles from home.
Alisa Petrov, 15, disappeared on April 21 after being dropped off at school in Utah, getting on a train out of town and asking for help to get to Las Vegas.
Nothing was heard from her until she walked into Stetson Hills police station in Colorado Springs on Sunday night and identified herself.
Police said the teen was ‘in good health,’ but it is still unknown where she was or if she was being held against her will.
‘Alisa’s parents have been notified of her location and are working with South Jordan Police to bring her home,’ police said.
Hours after she went missing, her frantic parents Olga and Nikolai Petrov discovered their daughter had a terrifying double life when her secret iPad was found hidden in her dresser.
The teenager dug the long-forgotten device out of a dusty old box and was chatting with three three men accused of exchanging graphic and explicit messages with her. All three are now behind bars.
Nikolai announced on Facebook that Alisa was found and that the family would soon travel to see her in Colorado.
‘We are all really happy that Alisa is found and looking forward to seeing her!’ he wrote.
‘Special thanks to the South Jordan Police Department who worked on weekends, and to the Salt Lake City FBI who helped them.
‘Thank you to all of our friends for your help and support.
On April 21, Alisa was dropped off at her school, Canyon Grove Academy, in American Fork, about 32 miles south of Salt Lake City.
Instead of going to class, she bought supplies at a nearby Speedway gas station and convinced a man there to drive her to the local train station.
Alisa got off the train in Provo, about 14 miles south of American Fork, and asked multiple people there to help her get a bus ticket to Las Vegas, where she had arranged to meet Matthew Nicholas Menard, 35.
Olga last week told DailyMail.com her daughter had about $1,000 saved from pocket money and birthday gifts that she didn’t spend after she turned 15 on April 16, just five days before running away.
‘Somebody else is either helping her and we don’t know who or where… I’m not suspecting the worst,’ she said.
‘That means she’s with somebody else and we don’t know if it’s a good person or a bad person.’
South Jordan Police Sergeant Shaun Becker said the investigation wasn’t over just because Alisa was found – ‘if anything, it’s just beginning’.
‘They’re going to continue to do everything they can to figure out what happened,’ he said at a press conference.
‘This was a missing girl case and we were for finding and holding bad actors involved in that case accountable.
‘If others become available, we will do the same and hold them accountable as well.’
Alisa has not explained why she ran away, but messages on Discord and Snapchat between Alisa and Samuel Teancum Mitchell, 41, another of the men accused of communicating with her, revealed deep animosity she apparently felt for her parents.
‘Within their chat, the juvenile mentions suicide and that she hates her parents,’ police wrote in a probable cause affidavit for Mitchell’s arrest.
‘Mitchell advised he had met a girl online who was mad at her parents and had started cutting herself.’
Alisa also requested multiple times for Mitchell to ‘kidnap her.’ Eight days before she ran away, she sent him locations of where she would be, the affidavit said.
The pair allegedly tried to arrange a meeting, with Alisa asking: ‘like r we [for real] meeting?? like please confirm please before tonight confirm if we r meeting pls bring condoms.’
Mitchell replied saying he was sick and couldn’t meet her.
He later told police she ‘mentioned that she met an FBI agent in Florida and had an interest in that guy,’ the affidavit alleged.
That man is believed to be Menard, a tech sales executive, not an FBI agent, who allegedly spent months grooming Alisa for sex.
Just two days before she disappeared, Alisa messaged Mitchell at 12.34am, saying: ‘IM RUNNING AWAY, please don’t contact me’.
This was allegedly because Alisa had changed her plan to meeting Menard while he was on a business trip to Las Vegas, before flying to Los Angeles and then his home in Miami.
Police detailed in affidavits the disturbing messages between Alisa and Menard dating back to January 17.
The pair never met, and police in Miami seized his phone on April 30 after messages were found between them on Alisa’s iPad.
Menard was charged with two counts of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor, enticement of a minor, and three counts of criminal solicitation on May 20, and surrendered to police eight days later.
Another man Alisa was allegedly talking to, William Taylor Glines, 37, from Texas City, Texas, was arrested on May 8 and remains in custody.
Glines was charged with aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor, attempted aggravated exploitation of a minor, sexual exploitation of a minor, enticement of a minor, and criminal solicitation.
He was also charged by police in Texas with possessing more than 50 child sexual abuse images or videos. He is yet to enter a plea.
The probable cause affidavit detailed disturbing conversations between Glines and Alisa, including how he allegedly convinced he to send nude photos and videos.
Mitchell was arrested last Wednesday and thrown in the Salt Lake County Jail charged with five counts of sexual exploitation of a minor.
Police found no child porn of Alisa on his phone, but allegedly found disturbing conversations with two other girls, one confirmed to be 15 and another who appeared to be about 12, and nude photos and videos of both of them.
Olga said she and her husband were vigilant in protecting their daughter and educated her about the dangers of talking to strangers online.
‘We regularly check her phone and there was nothing suspicious. Everything seemed to be normal, just classmates, neighbors,’ she said.
‘We never thought she could be talking to strangers in this way… but she was sneaky and we didn’t know. I wish we figured this out sooner and could help her.’