Rosie O’Donnell’s Missing Daughter Has Been Found Safe
Rosie O’Donnell’s missing daughter, Chelsea, has been found according to a tweet posted by the comedian Tuesday afternoon.
“Chelsea has been found and is safe in police custody — thank u all for the help and light #missingchildren,” she wrote at 6:25 p.m.
chelsea has been found and is safe in police custody – thank u all for the help and light #missingchildren
— ROSIE (@Rosie) August 18, 2015
O’Donnell’s representative told ABC News, “Rosie wants to thank everyone for their help, especially the South Nyack, N.Y., and Barnegat Light, N.J., police departments.”
The representative for O’Donnell also stated that police had found her missing daughter and that she is “safe in their custody.” No other details were available.
The Chief of Police for the South Nyack-Grand View Police Department, Brent P. Newbury, told ABC News that the department had been working with area law enforcement to locate O’Donnell’s missing daughter.
Police had searched for the 17-year-old since Sunday when the family reported her missing. A worried O’Donnell also took to her website and her Twitter earlier on Tuesday to ask for help.
She said she hadn’t seen her daughter in almost a week.
Rosie O’Donnell tweeted that her daughter may have been in New York City, about 30 miles south of the family’s home in Nyack.
A statement on her website gave a description of Chelsea when she was last seen.
“She was last seen Tuesday, August 11. She was wearing a black sweatshirt hoodie, dark ripped blue jeans, women’s grey converse sneakers and a black backpack. Chelsea has a large tattoo on her right side of a dream catcher with the word ‘Breathe.’ She left home with her 6 month old therapy dog named Bear… Chelsea stopped taking her medicine and is in need of medical attention.”
Cyndi Burger, O’Donnell’s publicist, added that Chelsea “like millions of people, lives with mental illness. It has been a difficult road for Chelsea and her family and they just want her back safe.”
dude was asking for u today … dude #urFAMILY #call pic.twitter.com/w9UTpGpfjI
— ROSIE (@Rosie) August 18, 2015
In February, Rosie O’Donnell announced that she would no longer be co-hosting The View. She also announced that she would be divorcing her wife, Michelle Rounds.
O’Donnell, who suffered a heart attack in 2012, said that her reasons for leaving the show were health related.
“There’s lots of stuff going on at home and there’s lots of stuff going on at work, and the only thing I can really control is work, By leaving.”
Chelsea is one of four adopted daughters from O’Donnell’s previous marriage to Kelli Carpenter. In March, a woman who claimed to be Chelsea’s biological mother said she was tricked into giving Chelsea up for adoption.
O’Donnell’s publicist assured the adoption was done completely by the books and that O’Donnell has even “encouraged and supported Chelsea’s desire to communicate with her birth mother.” She added it is “disappointing that Chelsea’s birth mother would go public with this personal story without ever having met Rosie.”
[Images via Rosie O’Donnell Twitter and Mike Coppola / Getty Images]
