Connie Lynn Mccallister was last seen on August 15, 2004, at the age of 16
© National Missing Person DirectoryConnie Lynn Mccallister was last seen on August 15, 2004, at the age of 16.
Connie McCallister, former honor roll student, wants to come back to U.S. - but is apparently afraid. She wound up in Mexico with her then-boyfriend, broke up and married the father of her children. 'We believe we could be putting her in danger if we say more,' says a member of the church trying to help her return.

A Wisconsin teenager who vanished nearly 10 years ago with her boyfriend has been found living in Mexico, now with three children, police said Wednesday.

Connie McCallister mysteriously disappeared in 2004, and was thought to have run off with her boyfriend of the time, later revealing that she was drugged, taken to the country against her will, and abused.

Wausau police Capt. Greg Hagenbucher told WAOW that McCallister's relationship with her boyfriend ended, and she eventually married the father of her three children - now ages 3, 5, and 7.

While authorities suspected that the former honor-roll student had fled to Mexico, police had no solid evidence until earlier this year.

According to the Wausau Daily Herald, a female missionary spotted McCallister down in Mexico and alerted authorities that the young 26-year-old woman could be the high school student that vanished all those years ago.

Hagenbucher told the Daily Herald that police confirmed her identity through Skype, adding that she looks similar to the bespectacled girl looking out from the Missing Children posters, only older and with longer hair.

Her aunt, Florence Volzka, 56, said that she never gave up hope that McCallister would return. "I always thought she would find a way home," Volzka told the Associated Press.

McCallister first talked to Volzka over Skype in September and told her aunt that she was drugged by her then-boyfriend and swept away to Mexico, his home country. At one point, he beat her brutally, causing her to be admitted to a hospital.

It was at the clinic where McCallister adopted a new identity, and eventually met and married her current husband and father of her children.

According to Volzka, her niece did not know Spanish, and struggled to get in contact with family, but after being identified by a missionary, she said she's eager to return home to the U.S.

The Trinity Lutheran Church is currently working to raise funds to get McCallister back to Wisconsin. Citing security reasons, church leaders didn't go into details of what they did or didn't know of McCallister's whereabouts for the past 9 years.

"We believe we could be putting her in danger if we say more," church member Judy Weise told the paper.

U.S. Consulate officials are working to get passports and other necessary documents to get the mother home, where several of her family members still reside. McCallister's mother, however, currently lives in Florida. Volzka said her niece will likely live with her in Athens, and hopes she will be home by Thanksgiving.

The transition won't be easy, though.

"She knows it's going to be (a) whole new world again, and she's afraid," the aunt said.

Her boyfriend from 9 years ago is wanted on charges of first-degree sexual assault on an unrelated victim, police say.