Folk legend Linda Perhacs has been reported missing.
Friends and collaborators of the 82-year-old singer-songwriter shared the news of Perhacs’s disappearance on social media Monday with a plea for people to come forward with any information.
Perhacs has not been in touch with her loved ones since she was discharged from an assisted living facility in Northridge, California, by her legal guardian eight months ago, according to a statement written by her former manager Laurel Stearns. In an email to The Independent, Stearns said that Perhacs had lived at the facility for eight years.
“Linda Perhacs our dear friend and legendary singer-songwriter was discharged from a residential care facility approximately eight months ago under the supervision of her legal guardian,” Stearns’s statement said. “Since then, friends and longtime collaborators have been unable to reach her and repeated attempts to contact her guardian have reportedly gone unanswered. Please help us locate Linda to ensure her wellbeing.”
A missing persons report for Perhacs was filed June 6 with the Los Angeles Police Department.
“The intention is not to intrude upon her privacy, but simply to ensure that she is safe and to re-establish communication with someone whose artistic contributions continue to resonate across generations,” Stearns explained.
Perhacs skyrocketed to fame decades after the release of her 1970 debut, Parallelograms. At first, the album was poorly received and had low sales, leading Perhacs to return to her job as a dental hygienist.
In the late Nineties, the album was rediscovered and became recognized as a lost folk classic in the age of the internet, leading it to be reissued several times. Perhacs released her second album, The Soul of All Natural Things in 2014 and her third, I’m a Harmony, three years later.
The musician’s friends and longtime collaborators, including writer Jessica Hundley, singer Julia Holter and DubLab co-founder Mark “Frosty” McNeill, have shared messages asking for anyone with information about Perhacs’s location to speak up.
Her co-producer, Fernando Perdomo, said in an update shared to the singer’s Instagram page Monday that he has been unable to reach her next of kin.
“We’ve all been in touch with her since she’s been in a home for memory care, and we even performed with her two years ago for her 80th birthday party,” Perdomo said in the video.
He went on to say that he wanted to speak to her about six weeks ago, “so I gave her a call and found out that she had been moved out by her next of kin, and because of California law they can’t tell us where she is.”
Perdomo added, “I think he might have blocked us, which is really, really weird.”
