NC mom who ran away from family 24 years ago makes extraordinary claim as she resurfaces for first time

The missing North Carolina mom of three has been located by The Post — 24 years after she ran away and ditched her family.

Michele Lyn Hundley Smith, now 62, claimed Thursday that her daughter is “forgiving” her after she was found by the local sheriff last week, and then hauled back to the county she fled on an old drunk-driving charge.

She’s now living alone in a trailer in a rural community in Robeson County, near the South Carolina line.

Her daughter Amanda, who was 14 when Smith left, confirmed that she has forgiven her mom but is communicating with her through a third party, according to a pal.

“Yes, they’re in contact through a friend of Michele’s and she has forgiven her mom but she doesn’t have any other comments for right now. She’s trying to handle things privately and respectfully,” the friend, who goes by Lynn, told The Post.

“She’s being incredibly strong, happy to be connected with her mom and is just ready for all this to quiet down so they can focus on rebuilding together privately,” the friend added.

Smith lives alone in a trailer in a rural community in the state’s poorest county near the South Carolina state line.

And she says she is trying to make amends with the family she left behind — including two daughters, 19 and 14, and a son who was just 8.

Michelle Hundley Smith, a woman with dark curly hair and a red top, smiling and wearing large earrings and a ring.
Michele Smith was found alive and living a new life after going missing in 2001.Facebook

Mugshot of missing woman Michelle Hundley Smith.
Michele Hundley Smith seen in a new mugshot.
“My daughter is forgiving me. We are in contact, so leave me alone,” she told The Post.

She will not face charges for abandoning her family, authorities in Rockingham County told The Post, but she was arrested for failing to appear on a drunk driving arrest just before she went missing in 2001.

Smith remains holed up in a tiny village about three hours from the family she ran away from at Christmas 24 years ago.

A neighbor said she led a quiet life with a new man whom she said was her husband.

“She’s been here for years and years…She’s a nice person. She’s been here a few times to talk to us,” a neighbor told The Post.

She told people she kept to herself because her husband had recently died and she was all alone.

Red mobile home with a wooden porch and steps in the rain.
Smith is living in a trailer in a rural community near the South Carolina state line.Lone Pine Press
“We asked why she didn’t come out of the house much and she said her husband passed. He passed last year…She was really sad about it. She said she was depressed and stayed inside,” the neighbor claimed.

A man had indeed been living at the house until he passed away in 2024, public records show, but the nature of their relationship is unclear.

A neighbor said the close-knit community of around 2,000 people is not a good place to hide because, “everyone knows everyone.”

But in this case, they didn’t know Smith’s past.

She refused to explain exactly why she left, but she blamed her “mental state.”

“When I left, the mental state I was in, I thought it was my only choice,” Smith told the Daily Mail.

“I know that I made the news, but I honestly 100% never knew that I was loved or wanted,” she added.

Her home life had been marked by constant drinking, vicious fights with her husband, and infidelity, her daughter Amanda told The Vanished Podcast in 2018.

The sheriff from Rockingham closed in on her location after turned up on the national NCIC missing persons database, the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Department told The Post.

The department did not say how she popped up in the system after 24 years; someone can be flagged for actions ranging from a traffic stop or trying to cross a national border.

Amanda Smith speaking about her missing mother.
Michele claims her daughter Amanda has “forgiven” her for disappearing all those years ago.FOX 8 WGHP
Smith had a miserable life of drunkenness, infidelity, and vicious fights with her husband before abandoning her family.

She had been fired for drinking on the job and booked for drunk driving in Rockingham County before the 38-year-old mom of three stepped out to go Christmas shopping in 2001 and never returned, Amanda told The Vanished.

Her discovery in a tiny rural town in North Carolina’s poorest county ends a mystery that had haunted her kids for two decades — but it leaves more questions than answers.

Smith told deputies she had left because of “domestic issues,” the sheriff’s department said, without giving further details.

Before she went missing, her daughter said that she drank so much that a shed near the house was filled with empty rum bottles.

“We had a little red building outside, and it was full of rum bottles, the empties, the ones that he had already drank,” Amanda recalled.

Smith had hid the bulk of her boozing from her husband Randy, a truck driver, Amanda told the podcast — one more deception in a marriage built on bitterness and lies.

The couple would fight constantly, vicious shouting matches that sometimes “got physical” and ended with Smith sleeping apart from her husband in a chair in the living room.

Both parents cheated on each other, Amanda claimed.

Randy Smith got together with a woman he met at the local bar less than six months after Michele vanished.

As for her young brother: “He was 8 years old, and he was very upset by it. We all were. She left near Christmas. That Christmas we did not have much of a Christmas because of us…That’s a Christmas I will never forget,” Amanda said on the show.

Amanda said it seemed like her father always knew his wife had simply run away.

He believed she was building a private stash of money from the family bank account, and at one point even mentioned a note Smith had left before leaving — though he later denied even bringing it up and never mentioned it again.