Overview
- The Gila County Sheriff's Office said investigators confirmed Christina Marie Plante is alive and closed the decades-old missing person case.
- Plante has been living in Springfield, Missouri as a married mother of three, later earning a psychology degree and working for a private-investigations firm, according to multiple reports.
- Cold-case investigators traced her through social media checks and public records requests after reopening the file using modern tools, officials said.
- Plante told a captain she ran away at 13, has declined to detail how she left or who helped, and authorities say they will withhold further information to protect her privacy.
- Her case underscores how renewed cold-case efforts can bring resolution years later, even as dozens of girls who disappeared in Arizona in the 1990s remain missing.