Police find missing woman
Sep. 26—Fannie Harden didn't know where to turn when she discovered her daughter missing earlier this week.
The Milledgeville woman was heartbroken.
Her daughter had never gone missing for more than a few hours.
This time around, though, her daughter, Quichina Harden, was gone for five days.
There was no trace of her.
Quichina's live-in boyfriend had no idea where she went when she suddenly walked out of the couple's residence last Saturday afternoon.
Fannie Harden said she asked her daughter's longtime boyfriend what happened to cause her daughter to just get up and walk out the door.
"He said she just flipped out."
Quichina's boyfriend told Harden that it wasn't the first time she had wanted him out of her house.
"He said she had kicked him out before when she flipped out, in his words," Fannie Harden recalled.
Quichina left behind her pickup truck and her cellphone.
The only thing she was believed to have taken was a small black bag that she kept personal items in, such as her driver's license and credit cards. She also took with her a black book bag with medical papers and other items inside.
Harden said her daughter suffers from mental illness.
Harden didn't immediately report her daughter as a missing person to local law enforcement authorities because her daughter had had a previous run-in with police.
"She would have been terrified if she knew the police were looking for her," Harden said of her daughter.
Thinking of what might work instead, Harden turned to The Union-Recorder for help.
She paid for an ad to appear in the newspaper seeking help from anyone who might know anything about her daughter's whereabouts.
Despite her immediate reluctance to call police for help, however, she was persuaded to call authorities because police have more resources available to help find her daughter.
Just a couple of hours after she provided information about her daughter to police, her daughter's boyfriend was visited by police officers in a couple of patrol cars.
"They went there because they couldn't reach me by phone at the time," Harden said. "They wanted someone to know that they had tracked down my daughter and that she had somehow made it to Atlanta and checked herself into a hospital there."
Harden said she was so relieved that police had found her daughter so quickly.
"I couldn't believe it; I cried tears of joy," Harden said.
She said she wanted to thank the officer that filed the missing person's report and those who worked to track down her daughter.
Quichina checked herself into an Atlanta-area hospital that provides behavioral health care for mental health issues and addictions.
"I thank the good Lord for this miracle; I thank the police and I thank the reporter that helped convince me that calling the police was the right thing to do."
