WDEP Radio 
by Samuel Clement
The story of Michele Hundley Smith sounds like something straight out of a mystery movie, except this one is real life, and real life loves plot twists.
Smith was found alive and healthy after going missing for 24 years. Yes, you read that right. Twenty-four years. That is long enough for a baby to grow up, finish college, and still have time to complain about student loans.
When authorities found her, people expected emotional family reunions and dramatic hugs in slow motion, but life had other plans. Instead of a big movie-style reunion, Smith was arrested for a 2001 DUI charge that was still hanging around like an old unfinished homework assignment.
According to reports, Smith said she never knew her family was searching for her all those years. That statement made people pause. Some people scratched their heads and others checked their own phone messages from 2005 just in case.
Michele Hundley Smith was 38 when she left her home in Eden, North Carolina, to go Christmas shopping across the border in Martinsville, Virginia, on December 9, 2001.
She never came back but last week she was found in North Carolina, at an address she asked police not to disclose to anyone – even her anguished family.
Smith told how she and her middle daughter Amanda, have already been in touch after the 62-year-old was arrested last night, later bailing out and returning to her home in Saint Pauls, North Carolina.
‘She has forgiven me and she has said I’m human like anybody else is,’ she told the Daily Mail exclusively.
Amanda, 39, campaigned tirelessly to keep the spotlight on her mother’s missing person case over 24 long years, creating a Facebook page and giving several interviews. She described her mother as her ‘best friend’ before she disappeared on December 9, 2001.
Smith opened up that she’s aware she made the news but never knew she was loved or wanted.
‘I know that I made the news, but I honestly 100% never knew that I was loved or wanted.
‘When I left, the mental state I was in, I thought it was my only choice.
‘I was just not in the mental state to stay. My children were not abandoned, they were left with their father to care for them.
‘My main thing is I want everybody to know, I’m in contact with my daughter Amanda. I’m starting with Amanda because she is the one reaching out to me and she wants to start with her.
‘She’s the only one right now I’m in contact with.’
‘I honestly believed I didn’t matter,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘When I found out, it broke me. That’s why I’m trying to rebuild something with her, because what she did, shows how much I really was loved.’
‘I travelled for years. We got together, and he kind of built me back up — made me feel like I was worth something,’ she said.
The case reminds everyone that missing person stories do not always follow predictable endings.
Sometimes people return, sometimes life moves on in strange directions, and sometimes, the reunion comes with paperwork. Lots of paperwork.
WDEP Radio 
