Missing Oregon exchange student found safe in northeastern Brazil

BRASILIA, Brazil – A 17-year-old American exchange student missing since last weekend was found safe today in northeastern Brazil, ending a drama that caused international alarm and sparked an intensive search for her, federal police said.

Mykensie Martin was taken to a police station in the coastal city of Salvador, 690 miles northeast of Brasilia, said Lt. Alexandre Silva of the federal police in Bahia, the state where Salvador is located.

Silva told The Associated Press that Martin was unharmed but could not provide additional information.

Martin told the Globo TV news network she arrived in Salvador on Tuesday. Someone tried to rob her shortly after she arrived, but Martin said she was helped by a waiter, Globo reported.

The teen arrived today afternoon at a federal police station in Salvador, said Rodrigo Koble, an agent with Interpol at the station.

The high school senior from Oregon "seems stressed, but there's nothing physically wrong with her that we can tell," he said in a telephone interview.

She was talking on the telephone with an FBI agent, he added.

Koble said he had no details on how or why she ended up in Salvador, far from her apparent initial destination of Brasilia.

"We will talk with her later," he said.

But state police officer Nelson Garcia in Brasilia said officers interviewed workers at a small hotel in the capital who said the teen stayed there Sunday night and talked with them about places to visit in Brazil.

Salvador is a colonial city in a part of Brazil renowned for its beaches, warm weather, Carnival celebrations and strong Afro-Brazilian culture.

Kalina Ligia Saraiva, the owner of the hotel in Brasilia, told the Correio Braziliense newspaper that Martin arrived at the hotel accompanied by a young Brazilian man who did not seem to know her very well.

The man checked Martin into the hotel and paid for the room, left and returned the next morning about 7:30 a.m. to pick her up when she checked out, Saraiva said in a report on the newspaper's Web site.

"She seemed all right," Saraiva said. "It didn't look like it was a kidnapping."

Martin was last seen Sunday hitchhiking toward Brasilia, Brazil's capital, which lies in the interior of Latin America's largest country.

Her disappearance prompted the U.S. Embassy to distribute thousands of fliers around Brasilia and in Unai, the small city 80 miles away where she was spotted hitchhiking.

Mykensie Martin left her host city of Carmo do Paranaiba in the central state of Minas Gerais early Sunday to travel 40 miles by bus to Patos de Minas, where she regularly attended a Mormon church for Sunday services.

Investigators said that instead of returning, she changed her bus ticket to travel to Unai, according to Kreg Roth of the Rotary Youth Exchange Program in Bend. Police said a bus fee collector told them Martin rode the bus to Unai.

Martin told the witness in Unai she was going to Brasilia for an event sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Brasilia and did not have enough money for a bus ticket, Unai police detective Celso Avila Prado said.

Embassy officials posted fliers along the road leading to the small city.

A youth camp for Mormon teens ages 12 through 18 is scheduled to take place this weekend outside Brasilia, but camp organizer Daniele da Silva Santos told the Correio Braziliense newspaper that Martin's name was not on the list of participants.

Associated Press Writer Harold Olmos contributed to this report from Rio de Janeiro.