A woman who vanished as a girl from her small Arizona town has been found alive after being missing for 32 years, as reported by the Gila County Sheriff’s Office. An official news release shared on Facebook on April 1 stated that Christina Marie Plante went missing at the age of 13 from Star Valley, located approximately 93 miles northeast of Phoenix. Known as “Tina,” the last sighting of Plante was in the early afternoon of May 15, 1994, on Moonlight Drive in the Star Valley and Payson area, according to a flyer posted on the Sheriff’s Office’s Facebook page. The breakthrough in identifying Plante came from new leads developed through technological advancements, modern investigative methods, and an in-depth case review.
A flyer from The Morning Call newspaper in Pennsylvania dated October 23, 1994, described the case of the blue-eyed Plante as an abduction by a stranger, revealed a clipping found on Newspapers.com. The flyer mentioned that Plante was last seen walking from her home to a stable to feed her horse. Search efforts back in the day involved law enforcement and volunteers conducted exhaustive ground searches and interviews, as mentioned in the press release. There was no indication about Plante’s reunion with family or loved ones in the release, and the exact timing of her reappearance remains unclear.
Gila County Sheriff J. Adam Shepherd did not provide an immediate response to inquiries regarding the case sent via email on April 1 by The Arizona Republic.
