Family of missing woman still hope for resolution

GRAND FORKS, N.D.  — Relatives of a North Dakota woman who went missing two years ago say they’ve given up hope that she will be found alive.

Florence Dumontet, 82, of Ardoch, vanished while driving to Washington state in October 2011. A manager of a gas station in Missoula  told an investigator she saw Dumontet with another woman on Oct. 17, 2011, but the report has not yielded any clues.

The missing woman’s son, Donald Dumontet, and daughter, Charlotte Medley, told the Grand Forks Herald they are hopeful only for a resolution to the mystery of their mother’s disappearance.

“It’s hard to believe that she’d be on the face of the Earth and no one would see her,” Donald Dumontet said.

Dumontet is still presumed to be alive under North Dakota law, as it takes about seven years before a missing person is declared dead.

Dumontet was last seen in Grand Forks on a security camera at a gas station at 7:22 a.m. on Oct. 16, 2011. It was the start of an annual 2,000-mile, 20-hour trek to visit her children in Shelton, Wash.

“We tried to talk mom into (moving) to Shelton for forever, and her response to us was, ‘I live in North Dakota,’” Medley said. “When my mother makes up her mind, there is no discussion. You just listen.”