The North Carolina mother who made national headlines last month when she was found alive and well by police 25 years after she was reported missing appeared in court the morning of Thursday, March 26, to answer to a drunk driving charge that pre-dates her disappearance.
Michele Hundley Smith — who went Christmas shopping in 2001 but never returned to her husband and kids or her home in Eden — was found just over two and a half hours away, living in the same state but a different town.
Smith, now 62, was 38 when she vanished.
A month before she went missing, though, she was arrested for driving while intoxicated. She was last seen by relatives prior to a scheduled court date on the matter.
Following her arraignment Thursday in Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office, Smith was approached outside by a reporter for the Charlotte Observer, who wanted to know why she’d disappeared for so long.
“It was personal,” she explained to the reporter. “I had my own demons at the time, and I was in my own head, and I had my reasons. People who’ve been in that situation will understand.”
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Smith then left in a car, declining to answer questions from reporters waiting outside.
Police said that in 2001, Smith registered a blood alcohol level of .28 when an officer stopped her on Mebane Bridge Road in Eden at 1:33 a.m. on November 11, the Observer reported. The officer said Smith “crossed [the] center line, swerved and ran [off] right side of [the] road, [had] red glassy eyes, [and] had odor of alcoholic bev.”
After Smith, the subject of a missing person’s investigation, was found by police on February 20, police were at her doorstep again three days later to detain her on an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court.
Police released her mugshot following her arrest, giving the world their first glimpse of the missing woman in decades.
She posted a $2,000 bond for her release.
Smith has seemingly been living in a trailer park in one of the poorest sections of North Carolina, which is only 165 miles away from where her family home is located in Rockingham.
While Smith claimed that her family had issues before her disappearance, her daughter, Amanda Hundley, previously said her mother struggled with a drinking problem. She added that she was fired from a veterinary practice for “drinking on the job” when she appeared on “The Vanished Podcast.”
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Authorities said that no prior domestic reports were found on file and there was no evidence of foul play from the family’s home before Smith went missing.
WFMY was outside the courthouse Thursday morning, and captured Smith’s reunion with her daughter, Amanda. Video shows the pair sharing an emotional embrace.
“It wasn’t that she didn’t want contact with us. It was never that, because she reached out to me,” Hundley told reporters outside the courthouse, the paper reported. “I’m not going to hold any grudge because she’s my mom. Stuff’s always going to happen.”
