(Newser) – A missing mom who was apparently in no big hurry to be found has been tracked down and now has another chance to get to know the children she left 42 years ago. After he was contacted by the Doe Network, a volunteer group that investigates cold missing-person cases, Indiana State Police Detective Sergeant Scott Jarvis managed to find Lula Ann Gillespie-Miller in a small town in south Texas, KWQC reports. In 1974, Gillespie-Miller, then 28, disappeared soon after giving birth to her third child. She told her family she was too young to be a mother, signed the children over to her parents, and wasn't heard from again, apart from a letter in 1975.

Jarvis, with the help of the 1975 letter, was able to follow Gillespie-Miller's trail from Indiana to Tennessee to Texas. He contacted Texas Rangers, who went to her home and confirmed that the 69-year-old is the woman who disappeared decades ago, NBC reports. Police say she didn't explain why she left her family behind in Indiana, but she agreed to have her contact information passed to her daughter, Tammy. Thanks to Jarvis' hard work, "this Easter weekend, Tammy Miller hopes to make contact with the mother she has never known," police said in a statement. (After 30 years, this missing man remembered his name.)

