Alzheimer’s-stricken ex-model B. Smith. |
Alzheimer’s-stricken ex-model B. Smith traveled more than 50 miles — from the top of Manhattan to the tip of Staten Island — after vanishing earlier this week, her husband has revealed.
The pioneering celebrity, 65, was found Wednesday at the La Parisienne Coffee House on Seventh Ave. a day after she went missing while heading out to the Hamptons. “Just for the record, here’s what B experienced, so there are no rumors,” husband Dan Gasby wrote on Facebook.
Gasby went on to describe her mysterious journey:
Smith, after traveling to Midtown from the Hamptons, walked north to Harlem. At some point, she turned around and headed back south, marching all the way to the Staten Island Ferry.
She took the ferry to Staten Island, hopped on a bus and eventually made her way back to the terminal.
After returning to Manhattan, she walked all the way to La Parisienne near W. 57th St. “where a friend happened to see her,” Gasby wrote.
Smith, one of the first African-American models to grace the cover of Mademoiselle, had last been seen about 8 p.m. Tuesday getting off the Hampton Jitney in Southampton.
Her husband called the cops after he learned she had inexplicably hopped off the bus before the Sag Harbor stop. It isn’t known how Smith got to Manhattan from the Hamptons.
A frantic search was launched.
Smith, whose first name is Barbara, was located after she was spotted eating at La Parisienne with an older woman.
In June, Smith spoke candidly about her struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.
You do try to hide it from everybody,” she told CBS News.
Smith — despite not being able to recall the date, month or year — remained hopeful about her prognosis.
“I think the future’s going to be fine,” she said. “I’m going to do my best to make it work out for me, and for as many people that I can possibly help, too.”
Smith couldn’t be reached Friday.
Following her modeling career, she jumped into the restaurant business, opening her first B. Smith restaurant in the city in 1986. She launched two others in the year that followed.
The tireless Smith was also the host of “B. Smith With Style,” a nationally syndicated talk show that aired in the mid-1990s on NBC 4 New York and on NBC affiliates across the country.
In April, after closing her restaurants, Smith and Gasby sold their Central Park West apartment for nearly $6 million and moved east to Sag Harbor.
In his Thursday Facebook post, Smith’s husband said he’s determined to help steer her through the crippling neurological disorder.
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