At about noon on March 19, detectives from the Kirkland Police Department (KPD) located 33-year-old missing woman Samantha Ehrich.

Ehrich, who has been diagnosed with mental disorders and a traumatic brain injury, had slipped out the back door of the Shumway Mansion Adult Family Home in Kirkland on March 12.

After a week of searching areas such as Kirkland, Bellevue and Seattle, KPD found Ehrich at Angeline’s Day Center located in downtown Seattle in the 2000 block of 3rd Avenue.

Det. Cpl. Cody Mann said he and a fellow detective “went downtown to Seattle [March 19] thinking there was a strong possibility [they’d] see her walking the streets of the town.”

He also brought up how since she had been at one shelter, Ehrich might have been at another. Throughout their week-long search for Ehrich, KPD detectives were able to find her name on a register at a homeless shelter in Seattle, which she departed on March 16.

Mann said he printed out fliers with Ehrich’s picture on them and started passing them around at shelters he visited. Angeline’s was the second establishment the detectives walked into, and within 10 minutes, they located the missing woman.

“We got lucky,” he said. “She was in a little bit of a fog and didn’t understand what was going on.”

Due to Ehrich’s mental disorders, she requires daily medication. As previously reported, without it, she becomes nonverbal.

Ehrich was medically cleared for COVID-19 after being found because she had been traveling across multiple cities, and detectives were uncertain what or whom she had come in contact with. Ehrich was safely returned to her caregivers at the family home in Kirkland.