Missing U.S. Teen Safe In Brazil

(AP)  A 17-year-old American exchange student missing since last weekend was found safe Thursday in northeastern Brazil, 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 said 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 report said she had already contacted her host family.

The teen arrived Thursday 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.

American Embassy spokesman John Wilcock said he could not immediately confirm the reports that the teen had been found safe in Salvador.

"We are looking into it. If it's true, it's great news," he said.

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

Her disappearance sparked international alarm, and the U.S. Embassy on Thursday distributed thousands of fliers around Brasilia and in Unai, the small city 80 miles away where she was spotted trying hitchhike.

Martin's father, Steve, was scheduled to fly to Brazil as early as Thursday, Wilcock said.

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 said 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.