By: Cale Colby
Authorities with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office issued an alert Monday concerning the disappearance of an 80-year-old woman who they believed to be lost. Ailene Duff left her house Monday morning around 9:00am and had not returned. She was driving a red Jeep Liberty, and officials were asking for the public’s help to locate the missing Valdosta woman.
Roughly 24 hours later, the search was called off as Mrs. Duff had been located by a Georgia State Patrol officer in Worth County. Though the woman was found apparently unharmed, and her family made the short drive up I-75 to pick her up and return her home, little was known about the woman’s disappearance or what she might have done between leaving Valdosta Monday morning and arriving in Worth County Tuesday morning.
The Sylvester Local contacted Ailene’s grandson, Jason Duff, Tuesday afternoon, and the man was able to offer a detailed account of Mrs. Duff’s travels while she was missing. According to the grandson, Duff left her home in Valdosta without her cell phone Monday morning. She was on her way to the farmer’s market to buy apples, but she left her phone at home.
Jason Duff says it is not unusual for his grandmother to leave around that time each morning to run errands or buy groceries. However, Monday morning, Mrs. Duff decided to take a little road trip rather than coming straight back home.
Ailene Duff drove down to Madison, Florida, but it started raining and she got a little lost. When she righted her course, she decided to visit Florida’s capitol, so she drove on to Tallahassee and drove around the town for a while.
At approximately 1:30 Tuesday morning, Mrs. Duff arrived in Crawfordville and attempted to rent a room at a hotel, but her credit card would not work, so the hotel would not let her stay. She continued driving through the night without sleeping, and she presumably drove through Thomasville, Moultrie, and Doerun before making her way across the Worth County line.
As the grandson explains,
“It didn’t really worry me until I woke up the next morning and she was still missing. But, thank goodness everything is okay. They took her to the hospital and they hydrated her and released her. She’s home now, and everything is okay.”
When he called her Tuesday, she explained that she had not been to Tallahassee in “forever,” and she just really wanted to visit the capitol. After questioning his grandmother about her unexpected trip, Jason Duff says she quickly asked him, “Are you going to get on to me now too?!” He told her that he knew she had been gotten onto enough, and he just asked her to let somebody know the next time she decides to leave.
Duff says his grandma is a very independent woman and she is stubborn. Mostly the family is just glad that the trooper found her, and she was able to return home safely.