Overview
- Rockingham County detectives received new information on February 19 and made contact with Smith on February 20, confirming she is alive and well.
- Sgt. A. Disher and Detective C. Worley verified her identity at an undisclosed location in North Carolina.
- Her whereabouts will remain undisclosed per her request, her family has been notified, and no immediate criminal charges are expected.
- Smith vanished on December 9, 2001, after leaving her Eden home to shop at a Kmart in Martinsville, Virginia, prompting a decades-long, multi-agency search involving the SBI, DEA, and FBI.
- Authorities have not released why she left or details of the intervening years as her daughter publicly expressed mixed emotions and plans to repurpose the family’s Facebook page to aid other missing-person cases.