this is old, but still intriguing...

Deliveryman Ming Kung Chen is alive and well, but police were confronted with a new mystery: How did he go unnoticed since last Friday evening, trapped and screaming in an elevator in the very building they had been searching?

For three days, police conducted a massive search that included police in helicopters checking rooftops and bloodhounds searching nearby Van Cortlandt Park, Woodlawn Cemetery and the Jerome Park Reservoir.

But just past 5 a.m. yesterday, the alarm sounded in elevator No. 2 in one of the two high-rise buildings in the housing complex and firefighters called to the scene pried open its door and pulled out a trembling, dizzy and dehydrated Chen. He immediately quaffed bottled water handed him by a building worker, then was rushed to Montefiore Medical Center.