A North Carolina mother of three who disappeared just weeks before Christmas in 2001 has been found alive nearly 24 years later, stunning her family and reopening one of the region’s most puzzling missing-person cases. Michele Lyn Hundley Smith, who vanished at the age of 38 after leaving her home in Eden to go shopping, was located “alive and well” at an undisclosed location in North Carolina in February 2026. Authorities say she had been living a new life, though many details about her disappearance and the years that followed remain unclear.
