A North Carolina mother of three who vanished over two decades ago was found alive and living a new life — leaving her family reeling with questions over her whereabouts, according to authorities and reports.
Michele Lyn Hundley Smith, then 38, disappeared in December 2001 after leaving her home in Eden to do Christmas shopping at a Kmart in Virginia, according to the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office.
Smith’s “troubling” disappearance prompted multiple agencies across North Carolina and Virginia, including the FBI, to search for the mother of three for “countless” hours and pursue multiple investigative leads, cops said.
A missing person flyer distributed at the time of her disappearance noted she should be considered “endangered” and “would not leave her kids by choice.”
Roughly 24 years later, Smith was found “alive and well” at an undisclosed location in North Carolina on Friday after officers received a tip, authorities announced.
Her current whereabouts will not be disclosed, though her family has been notified that she has been located, police said.
“I kind of want to go outside and scream, ‘She’s alive, she’s alive” Smith’s cousin, Barbara Byrd, told WFMYNews 2.
“My biggest question is to her … what happened all those years ago in December? What made you leave? What happened?” Byrd said.
“I never thought Michele was dead. I knew she was alive. It’s just a feeling that I had my whole life,” she said.
In a lengthy statement posted to Facebook on Sunday, one of Smith’s shocked children wrote that “these last couple of days… have been a whirlwind of emotions.”
“As far as my opinions and feelings on my mom…I am ecstatic, I am p***ed, I am heartbroken, I am all over the map! Will I have a relationship once more with my mom?” she said in the statement posted on a Facebook account dedicated to finding her missing mother.
“Honestly I can’t answer that because I don’t even know. My initial reaction would be yes, absolutely, but then I think of all the hurt…But even then, my mom is only human, just as we all are,” she wrote.
“When my mom was a part of my daily life, she showed me a love and bond that will never ever be forgotten. There were mother-daughter arguments of course, but right now all I can remember are the smiles we shared, the times together that were happy, and the love I felt!”
The motive for Smith’s disappearance is not immediately clear.