Family Reacts After Mom of 3 Who Went Missing Without a Trace Nearly 25 Years Ago Found 'Alive & Well' Leading New Life

A North Carolina mom of three who was last seen in December 2001 has been discovered “alive and well” by authorities more than 24 years later. Now, her family is speaking out.

On Friday (February 20), the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a news release on Facebook that they were successful in closing a decades-old missing person case regarding the “troubling” disappearance of Michele Hundley Smith.

Per the release, Hundley Smith, then 38, was last seen on December 9, 2001, when she left her family home in Eden, N.C. to travel across state lines to shop at a K-Mart in Martinsville, Va.

Authorities spent the following decades determined to find the missing mother and wife but were unsuccessful until a recent lead led them to the woman. However, her recovery is raising new questions for the family.

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“On February 19, 2026, the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Division received new information regarding [Michele Hundley Smith] and her disappearance,” the release read, adding, “Detectives immediately followed up on the lead and began further investigative efforts.”

The following day, she was found “at an undisclosed location within North Carolina alive and well.”

“At her request, her current whereabouts will remain undisclosed. Her family has been notified that she has been located and informed of this request as well,” authorities wrote.

According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUS), operated by the United States Department of Justice, Hundley Smith was driving her green 1995 Pontiac Trans Sport when she left the home in 2001 at approximately 6:30 p.m.

In 2020, her daughter Amanda Smith spoke about her mom’s disappearance during an appearance on NBC News’ Dateline.

Amanda recalled her mother kissing her and her younger brother before leaving the home, giving the impression that nothing was different.

“It wasn’t unusual for her to go shopping in the evenings,” she recalled. “And she often went to Martinsville to shop. We expected her back within a couple of hours. But she never came home.”

Michele‘s middle child and youngest daughter spent the following decades determined to find her mother. She created a Facebook page, which she used to raise information about the missing woman. It has remained active over the years.

Now that her mother has been found, though Amanda has not been in contact with her, she plans to use the page to help others in similar situations.

She reflected on the current situation in a post on the page, asking the public to “please respect [her] family” as they process the situation.

Particularly, she mentioned her father, saying that he’d “been through so many accusations” since her mother’s disappearance.

“Even before social media was big, where we live in a small town, there were many [people] acting as if they just knew he was involved… Well he wasn’t!” she wrote.

Amanda continued, adding, “I always knew that there was no way that he could do something like that for many reasons and the biggest being [because] my father could never continue to lie to us for decades. My father has been through so much and I want it made clear that while their marriage had issues (just as many marriages go through) that my mom did not leave simply [because] of a bad marriage.”

Now knowing that her mom has been found, she wrote, “I am ecstatic, I am pissed, I am heartbroken, I am all over the map!”

“Will I have a relationship once more with my mom? Honestly I can’t answer that bc 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 explained, adding, “Everything I have been through in life, I can absolutely understand taking off and leaving.”

“What I am saying is that I am a runner as well and while this isn’t something to be proud of at all, it’s a part of being human,” she wrote. “Each one of us humans have our faults, we each have a shadow part and we each deserve the chance to better ourselves and to heal from our past.”

Asking for privacy for her family, Amanda noted that everyone would have to process this differently and make their own decisions about how to proceed.

Amanda isn’t the only family member to have addressed the news.

Michele‘s cousin Barbara Byrd spoke to WFMY2 Newshttps://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/local/michele-hundley-smith-missing-since-2001-from-rockingham-county-found-alive-in-nc-family-reacts/83-5e702203-fe38-4d09-aa46-09400070f381, saying that she was able to “understand and respect that she doesn’t want any of us to contact her.”

She added that she was “not angry,” but revealed what she’d like to ask Michele if given the chance: “My biggest question is to her … what happened all those years ago in December? What made you leave? What happened?”