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A Mesa woman was left with severe chemical burns in September 2010 after a stranger walked up to her outside her home and threw sulfuric acid in her face, an attack that Mesa police say was never solved.

Derri Velarde, 41, a divorced mother of five, was getting out of her car near Val Vista Drive and Southern Avenue on the afternoon of Sept. 3, 2010, when a woman approached carrying what looked like a cup of water, according to Velarde's account to CBS News and the Phoenix New Times. The woman stopped, looked at her and threw the liquid, which turned out to be sulfuric acid.

Velarde ran inside, where her 18-year-old daughter called 911. On the recording later released by police, Velarde can be heard crying in pain as her daughter pleads with a dispatcher for help. "She just got home from work and somebody threw acid on her," the daughter says, according to news reports on the call. "She has acid all over her body."

Velarde was hospitalized with second-degree burns to her face, neck, back and arms, with deeper burns on her back, and later faced skin grafts and reconstructive surgery, according to CBS News.

She told reporters she did not believe the attack was random. "It was definitely planned for me," she said. "It was premeditated." Velarde said the woman looked vaguely familiar and that she had received intimidating text messages in the days before the attack.

Mesa police released a composite sketch about five days later, describing the suspect as a Hispanic woman between 30 and 40 years old, roughly 5 feet 6 inches tall and 140 pounds, with shoulder-length black hair, wearing a black tank top and black sweatpants with a white stripe. Detective Michael Melendez said fingerprints lifted from the evidence produced no match in law enforcement databases.

The case drew national attention in part because it came days after a widely reported acid attack in Vancouver, Washington, that was later found to be self-inflicted. Mesa investigators said they had no reason to doubt Velarde, pointing to independent witnesses who saw the attack, and Detective Steve Berry said there was no indication she had harmed herself. No arrest was ever made.