Sixty-two years ago, Audrey Backeberg disappeared from a small city in south-central Wisconsin after reportedly hitchhiking with her family’s babysitter and catching a bus to Indianapolis.

Last week, the Sauk County Sheriff’s Office announced that the 20-year-old woman who disappeared around a corner at the bus stop had been found alive and safe in another state.

“She’s happy, safe and secure; And just kind of lived under the radar for that long,” Isaac Hanson, detective with the sheriff’s office, said Monday, explaining that she chose to leave Reedsburg likely due to an abusive husband.

Hanson was assigned the case in late February and quickly discovered an out-of-state arrest record that matched Backeberg. He and other officials met with Backeberg’s family to see if they had a connection with that region. They also started digging through Backeberg’s sister’s Ancestry.com account, pulling census records, obituaries and marriage licenses from that region.

Within about two months, they found an address where a woman was living that Hanson said shared a lot of similarities with Backeberg, including date of birth and social security number. Hanson was able to get a deputy from that jurisdiction to go to the address. Ten minutes later, Backeberg, now in her 80’s, called Hanson.

“It happened so fast,” he said. “I was expecting the deputy to call me back and say, ‘Oh nobody answered the door.’ And I thought it was the deputy calling me, but it was actually her. And to be honest it was just a very casual conversation. I could sense that she obviously had her reasons for leaving.”

Most of the information he learned during that call he declined to share, saying that it was still important to Backeberg that she not be found.

“I think it overwhelmed her of course with the emotions that she had, having a deputy show up at her house and then kind of call her out and talk with her about what happened and kind of relive 62 years in 45 minutes,” he said.

Hanson described discovering her safe after more than six decades practically unheard of. And while he doesn’t know what will happen next in terms of her family reconnecting, he said he was happy that she can reach out if she wants to.

“There’s family living here, so she has my contact number if she ever wants to reach out or needs anything, any phone numbers of family members back here,” he said. “Ultimately she kind of holds the cards for that.”

Copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.