Help us Find Laura Nimbach

Laura Marie Nimbach is one of the most intelligent, caring, beautiful and wonderful people that I’ve ever met. She talked about her nieces and nephews constantly. She is just a wonderful person.

She grew up in a rough part of Detroit. Luckily her dad was able to send her to a private college prep school in a nearby suburb. She has always supported herself from a young age.

When I met her in our sophomore year of high school I was amazed that she even had to buy her own food.  Her dad would leave her home for days alone in a neighborhood that was bad to say the least. She would call my mom and have to ask her to take her to the library so that she could write papers for school. Laura is amazingly smart and graduated near the top of her class in 2004.

After graduating high school she lived with my family for a few months. During this time, she bought a car and was so proud to have saved up enough money to pay for it in cash.

She always wanted to be a nurse and she attended Wayne State for a few years. While going to school there she was a waitress at a sports bar in Livonia. She made great money and the job soon overshadowed her schooling. After two years of attending Wayne State, she dropped out. She was working 10 hour shifts to be able to support herself as her dad was not willing nor able to do so.

It was around this time she was in a relationship that became violent. Her then boyfriend started stalking her,  broke into her apartment and eventullay beat her up badly. During this time I was living in Florida and I came up to see the family. Right before I was going to come to Michigan, she told me what happened, I asked her if she wanted to move to Florida – she did.

At first when Laura lived in Florida everything was great. She lived at my apartment and we hung out all the time. That was really a great time. We watched movies, went out together and it was like we were sisters. She worked on the beach and she loved it.

About a year later is when I started noticing something was wrong. She wasn’t as happy as she had been and she was often anxious. I didn’t find out that she was using drugs until later.

We still kept in contact after I moved back to Michigan in the fall of 2007 and I was down there visiting almost all the time. It was the same with her sisters, she was always talking to them on the phone but they didn’t have enough money to go down there.

The summer of 2008 was when I found out that she was using Oxycontin on a daily basis. She said that she wanted to get clean, but wasn’t ready yet. Because of her addiction she was only a shadow of her former self. At times the old Laura would come out and it would break my heart.

On the day before Thanksgiving of 2008, Laura’s then boyfriend beat her up badly and was arrested. The next day Laura overdosed on Oxycontin. Her roommate saved her life by calling 911. Laura was in a coma for 2 days and her mother and sister came down immediately.  She suffered complete heart failure and kidney failure. After she was released from the hospital, she went to live with her mother in Kentucky for about three months.

Laura went back to Florida in January of 2009. She began using heavily again and ended up being homeless. She had another run in with the same man that beat her up the day before Thanksgiving. This time she went into a domestic violence shelter in Clearwater. She had talked to her sister about how great the long term program they had there and how great it was. She was looking forward to getting her life back. She had been there for about two weeks when she decided to leave. The following day she was seen by the Pinellas County Sheriffs office at 4880 49th Street North in St. Petersburg Florida while sleeping behind a building. They gave her information about nearby shelters but she never made it to any.

On February 15th, when she went to a piano recital with her cousin who lived in the area, she told her how upset she was that her abuser did not come pick her up from the shelter for a date that they planned. We know Laura was in contact with her abuser and we fear that he could have done something to her.

She talked to her sisters and mom one a week minimum until the day before her disappearance. Even if she didn’t want to talk, she would still answer the phone and make up some excuse (i.e. it’s too windy, I can’t hear you).

Laura disappearing is not in her character. She is very loved and we would love to be able to have some closure to her disappearance.

- Amanda