SARASOTA COUNTY, Fla. (SNN TV) — A Sarasota mom has been missing for almost a month.
44-year-old Gina Ludlam has been missing since July 26, according to her mother Maria Ludlam.
Maria said Gina struggles with mental illness and that she’s disappeared before, but never for this long.
“Gina is actually officially mentally disabled,” Ludlam said. “She has some serious diagnoses and sometimes her reality is skewed and she has co-occurring addiction.”
Maria worries that Gina may not be aware when she’s in danger.
“She might not have a fear of strangers or the danger that goes with them,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody said ‘you want to go for a ride?’ She’d say sure.”
Which is exactly what happened the first time Gina disappeared in December.
Maria said that a couple Gina didn’t know asked her to go on a road trip with them. She returned unhealthy and disheveled.
“I asked her ‘why did you say yes?’ And she said, ‘well nothing else was going on and they seemed really nice,’” Ludlam said.
Gina traveled all over the state of Florida before returning home.
“She had been as far west in the panhandle as Panama City, she had been across the state on the East Coast in Daytona, she had been in Tampa, and she said not quite into Miami, but somewhere down on the lower East Coast,” Ludlam said.
According to Ludlam, before Gina went missing again in July, she was staying at her boyfriend Sam’s house.
When Ludlam went to pick her up for a doctor’s appointment on a Monday, Sam said she had left the Thursday before and he hadn’t seen her since.
“I don’t know if she met somebody different, if she met them again, or if someone is holding her somehow against her will,” Ludlam said. “That’s one of my great fears.”
Maria adopted Gina’s 10-year-old daughter, who she said is devastated over her mom’s disappearance.
The Sarasota Police Department said they are working with organizations all over the state of Florida to help find Gina.
“It’s not only communicating with other law enforcement agencies, but other resources in the community and surrounding communities. Hospitals, stuff like that. Since she is a missing woman, at this point, that report is taken and shared with places all over the Suncoast and across the state of Florida,” said SPD Public Information Officer Cynthia McLaughlin.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Sarasota Police Department at 941-263-6773.