Missing MSU Students Found

Two university students who vanished from a motel on Cape Cod and failed to show up for meetings with their parents have turned up in Florida.

Leanne Gouveia, mother of 21-year-old Justin Gouveia of Lowell, said a private investigator called her husband, Joseph, on Saturday and said her son and Danela Alfaro-Lopez of Dearborn, Mich., had been located and were OK.

"I'm shaking, I'm so ecstatic," she said. "It's beautiful, it's just beautiful."

The couple were found at a hotel in the Orlando area, said Elise Camille, a spokeswoman for the Orange County, Fla., sheriff's office.

Camille said a deputy making routine license plate checks at the hotel Saturday called in the couple's plate number, and was told a couple of hours later that the car had been reported missing.

When the deputy returned, she said, the couple told him they didn't tell their parents they were going to Florida because they knew their parents wouldn't approve of the trip.

"They're fine. They're calling their parents," Camille said. She said the couple used only cash and didn't use their cell phones. "I don't know, maybe they didn't want to be found," she said.

No one picked up the phone at the couple's room Saturday afternoon. The hotel front desk referred all questions to company headquarters in Atlanta, where there was no immediate response to a call seeking comment.

Justin Gouveia and Alfaro-Lopez, 19, both Michigan State University students, had last been seen leaving a bed and breakfast in Yarmouth, Mass., on July 26. They didn't check out but left the room key and enough money to cover their stay, police said.

They were supposed to meet Gouveia's parents in Maine on July 27 but never showed, Joseph Gouveia said.

Alfaro-Lopez's parents waited for her to return on a flight to Detroit Metropolitan Airport but she never arrived. Her mother, a Wayne County assistant prosecutor, said the couple met five years ago.

Joseph Lopez, Alfaro-Lopez's father, said Saturday he was thrilled to know his daughter is safe.

"All I can say is that obviously we're extremely happy," Lopez said. "God answered our prayers."