Good NewsBelieved to be dead for 30 years, Phoenix woman reunited with family
In 1981, Betty Lukich, then in her mid-30s, left her life in Maine "to get away from it all" and started a new one Arizona.
She told ABC 15 that she felt forced to leave 33 years ago to escape a bad relationship with her controlling ex-husband. She claimed he forbid her from seeing her children.
She spent the next 14 years driving a tractor-trailer through the southern states.
Her family, including her four children and four sisters, didn't hear from her again — until this year.
In fact, for more than 30 years, Lukich's family believed she was dead, thanks in part to one of her brothers drunkenly admitting to burying her "in the pot field behind his house" in Indiana, Bangor Daily News reported.
"I thought she was dead," Donna Keniston, one of Lukich's daughters, said. "I was 12 the last time I saw her. I’ve been searching for her but I never found her. My dad told us that my mother didn’t want us."
Earlier this year, Lukich, now 69, connected with cousins in central Maine through a family-history website. With Lukich's permission, those cousins contacted Lukich's sisters.
"We cried all day," Mary Inman, one of Lukich's sisters, told the Bangor Daily News of their response to the news that their sister was alive.
"I talked to mom right after that and told her all about us," Keniston said. "She said she had a Facebook page and we started getting reconnected that way."
On Sunday, the family was reunited with Lukich, who arrived at Bangor International Airport for a month-long visit. A 200-person family reunion is planned for later in the month, on Lukich's 70th birthday.
Lukich appears to be back in her family's life for good. She plans on moving to North Carolina to live with her daughter.
