For 12 years, no one knew where newspaper reporter Jody Roberts had gone. Not her co-workers, not her parents, not the police.
Apparently, neither did Roberts. She turned up alive and well Tuesday but apparently unable to remember any of her life before she vanished in 1985.Still, her return left family and friends elated.
"This is the best news. This is just wonderful," Marilyn Roberts said after an emotional phone call with her daughter.
"For 12 years we've all wondered what happened to a wonderful colleague and a good reporter," said Tom Osborne, senior editor at the News Tribune in Tacoma, where Roberts once worked. "We would love to know more, but we're happy today just to know that Jody's alive."
Roberts had not been seen since she failed to appear for an assignment at Pacific Lutheran University in May 1985. She was 27.
Some thought she had come to harm because of her tough reporting, including stories about corruption in government and investigations into the Green River serial killer.
The story about her disappearance was back in the news recently because a sheriff's captain who had been accused of threatening Roberts over a story was up for promotion. On July 7, a woman who had seen her photo in the news contacted police.
"She recognized her and called us and said, `I worked with her in a another state,' " King County Sheriff spokeswoman Joanne El-ledge said Tuesday.
The tip led to Roberts' discovery in Alaska, where she apparently had been living since 1989. She said she had no idea of her past.
"She didn't know she was a reporter. She didn't know when her birthday was," her mother, of Lake Oswego, Ore., told KSTW-TV.
She also didn't know she had parents and siblings, and a two-hour phone conversation failed to jog her memory, Roberts said.
Monday was Roberts' 39th birthday. She thought she was 35.