The 70-year-old Chicago woman whose family had reported her missing last week was found safe in Tennessee on Thursday, Chicago police said.
Roberta Taylor had worried her daughters when she left on June 19 for a family reunion in Murfreesboro, Tenn., carrying a bundle of money she had won in the Illinois lottery. Taylor never called to say she had arrived, and relatives there had not heard from her.
Thursday, Wentworth area police officers tracked Taylor by checking to see if she arrived in Chattanooga, Tenn., her ticket destination.
“Sometimes we come back to square one. Sometimes people are missing because they want to be missing,” said Officer Patrick Camden in the news affairs office. “It’s not against the law to be missing.”
Officers checked local hospitals and morgues last week after the family reported Taylor missing.
Roberta Taylor asked police not to disclose her whereabouts to family members, said daughter Monia Taylor, who still has not spoken to her mother.
Monia Taylor said she still does not know where her mother is and has no idea when she will return to Chicago.
Roberta Taylor won almost $10,000 in the lottery about a month ago, and cashed the check the day after she received it on June 17. Family members worried that she may have been robbed as she headed out of town.
The last time a family member saw Taylor was about 3 p.m. on June 19, when her husband watched her climb into a cab in front of their Grand Boulevard home headed for the Greyhound bus terminal.
