FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — She had been clean for a few months while living with her mom. But she had a relapse in early March, leaving a note for her mom that she was sorry and needed to leave to go find herself.

The following day she called her mom, asking for $50. No, the mother said. And then the 43-year-old addict disappeared.

That was until Tuesday when a passer-by who had just parked her car in Delray Beach heard the woman calling from a storm drain below. The woman trapped below told a surprising story: She said she’d been underground — wandering tunnels — for three weeks.

Days later, the city still was looking into the mystery of how the woman got there. Was she really trapped in the drainage system for so long? And if she was, how’d she even survive? Calling it an “only-in-Florida” story, Delray Beach Mayor Shelly Petrolia planned to push for answers.

“I know they are trying to find out if the story does match,” Petrolia said Wednesday. “The story is so bizarre. But people should know better than to go into the sewer system. This is not the action of a rational person.”

Ted White, a spokesman for the Delray Beach Police Department, added, “Those are the questions we have.”

The woman’s family is thankful that the passer-by found her and that emergency workers saved her, a family friend, Michael Hahn, said Thursday. The woman, who was released from the hospital Tuesday, is now with her mother recuperating. “Obviously the victim has been through a very traumatic situation and needs time to heal,” Hahn said.

Gone missing

The woman who was trapped in the drainage system has a history of mental health issues, drug addiction and making poor decisions when under the influence, according to a Delray Beach police report. The South Florida Sun Sentinel is not naming her because of her mental health issues.

The woman’s screams on Tuesday alarmed the passer-by, who had just parked her car in the area of West 11 and Atlantic avenues. The bystander called 911.

“There’s somebody stuck in a sewer over here!” the bystander told a dispatcher.

The circumstances were so unusual, the dispatcher had to double-check. “I’m sorry, there’s a … somebody’s stuck?”

“There’s a lady stuck in a sewer! Yes, she cannot get out.”

Rats and snakes, garbage all end up in the storm drain. Firefighters showed up to pull the woman to safety. When the woman was pulled up, she was dirty and her hair was covered with leaves.

She was unclothed and unable to stand. The woman told police she was swimming in a canal in West Delray when she vanished on March 3. She says in a shallow part of the canal, she opened a door that led her to a series of tunnels.

According to a police report, the woman said the first tunnel led to another tunnel and then another. She said she eventually became lost and remained underground for the next three weeks. She said she ended up in the drainage ditch on Atlantic Avenue by following the light. Then Tuesday, the bystander finally heard her screaming for help, she said.

The woman told police that she found an unopened bottle of ginger ale. What she ate, if she did at all, was not clear, White said.

“I would like to know how she [survived] down there as for long as she says she was down there,” White said.

The Delray Beach police report described the woman as dehydrated but lucid. A mental health team was sent to Delray Beach Medical Center to evaluate the woman, the report said. Neither the woman’s mother nor boyfriend could be reached for comment by the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Wednesday.

Hahn said he and the woman’s mother believe the woman’s account of how she ended up in the storm drain. He said the woman had nothing to eat the entire time she underground. The family has asked for privacy.

“She’s recovering but she’s very weak at this point,” Hahn said.

Storm drains

South Florida being abnormally dry this month may have been both a blessing and curse for the woman.

According to the National Weather Service, the Palm Beach County area has measured just .55 inches of rain. The average for this time would be 2.62 cumulative inches of rain.

A heavy rain storm could have drowned the woman, White said. Then again without rain, she could have died from dehydration.

White said if the woman did get into the storm drain system through a canal, it was likely a canal owned and maintained by the Florida Department of Transportation, at a golf course about a mile from the woman’s boyfriend’s home. There, the openings are 66 inches in diameter, White said.

A representative for the Florida Department of Transportation did not respond to a reporter’s written questions Wednesday.

White said it’s possible the police close their case — without ever knowing exactly what happened.

If the woman did access the drainage system through some large opening, should changes be made for safety? Petrolia said you cannot fully close a water system, because if you did, it wouldn’t work. But then again, she said it is worth looking at if other measures should be taken.

“That’s the whole idea — to drain the water,” Petrolia said.