Estranged dad missing for three decades, so Queens woman becomes private investigator to find him

After three failed attempts to find her estranged father, Eliza Perez decided to get some professional training to aid her search - she became a private investigator.

It paid off.

She met her father, Louis Perez, for the first time in 29 years on May 17 and had the added satisfaction of introducing him to her newborn daughter, Valeria.

They are now living in South Richmond Hill, catching up on decades of being a family.

"Sometimes now I sit here, and I look at her, and I'm shocked. It took a little while to sink in," Louis, 57, said of being reunited with his daughter.

The family saga may have found its happy ending in Queens, but it started in North Carolina and took a long detour in Puerto Rico.

When Louis was discharged from the Marine Corps in 1975, he moved to Manhattan. He was struggling with posttraumatic stress disorder from his three years working in an armory in North Carolina during the Vietnam War.

It was during one of his flashbacks that he stabbed his wife, Rosa, he said.

"I just woke up in the middle of a bad nightmare," he recalled. "I didn't really wake up until I heard her screaming and saw the kitchen knife and all the blood."

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