Britt Jones
A woman who has been missing for decades, has finally been found – alive and well, and with a totally new life.
When it comes to missing person cases, there aren’t always positive outcomes, but for Christina Maria Plante, she survived.
At just 13 years old at the time of her disappearance on May 15, 1994, in Payson, Arizona, Christina, now 44, 'vanished without a trace’.
With no leads or knowledge of where she had gone, the authorities classified her disappearance as ‘endangered and under suspicious circumstances’.
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With no further information coming in from tips or interviews, her name was put on the national missing children's databases, but her case went cold.
However, 32 years later, on April 1, the Gila County Sheriff's Office announced the ‘successful resolution’ of her missing person's case.
The Gila County Sheriff's Office Cold Case Unit ended up cracking the case after revisiting her files, and it’s thanks to the advancement in technology that she was found.
“Investigators have confirmed her identity, and her status as a missing person has been officially resolved,” the Gila County Sheriff's Office said.
But while it’s an amazing feat to see Christina alive and well, there won’t be any further updates to her story.
“Out of respect for Christina's privacy and well-being, additional details will not be released at this time,” the sheriff's office said, adding: “The Gila County Sheriff's Office remains committed to pursuing all unresolved cases and encourages anyone with information regarding other cold cases to come forward.”
The sheriff’s office went on to say that re-opening cold cases are ‘bringing long-awaited answers to families and communities’.
While uncommon, there have been other instances of people being found years after being reported missing.
For example, Steve Carter was adopted from an orphanage in Honolulu, Hawaii, when he was four years old, and had been raised by Steve and Pat Carter, his adoptive parents.
But after seeing a story of a woman who stumbled upon a missing persons poster of herself as a kid, Steve went looking into his past and found that his mother had abandoned him at a stranger’s home before taking herself to a psychiatric hospital.
His father, Max Barnes, went on to report him missing, and after decades, the pair reconnected for the first time since June 1977.
Speaking on the What It Was Like podcast, the salesman said: "I had an amazing childhood.
"I was adopted and raised by two individuals who are just phenomenal... They'll always be my parents."