For a Jane Doe, Seeking an Identity and Immigration Status

One person was positive the woman was the well-dressed bag lady who used to frequent a Pathmark supermarket near the Woodbridge Center mall. Another remembered serving her cheeseburgers at the local Burger King.

Since November 1994, when she was found wandering a New Jersey mall, a woman’s identity has been a mystery. But Lt. Eduardo Ojeda, shown visiting the woman, hopes an answer is near.

A woman from East Harlem believes that Jane Doe may be a former neighbor, Jenny Peña, above with her son, right.

Nydia Nieves, a 41-year-old laundress from Reading, Pa., was sure it was someone she knew, too — an Ecuadorean immigrant named Jenny Peña, whose disabled son lives on Staten Island. Ms. Nieves drove 70 miles to visit the woman here at Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital, where the sign on the woman’s door says simply J. Doe, and held her hand.

“Inside of me, I feel that it’s her,” Ms. Nieves said afterward.

After 14 years of languishing in anonymity, of not belonging to anybody, the woman may soon be reclaimed, discovered, identified. The calls have been pouring in since the New Jersey Human Services Department circulated her photograph to the news media last month, and Lt. Eduardo Ojeda, who works for the department and is leading the hunt, said he is certain that “somewhere in there there’s going to be a bingo.”