‘I JUST WANT CLOSURE’
“She has a 26-year-old son that loves her and an 18-year-old daughter that misses her terribly ... it’s hard.” Milford mom still looking for missing daughter one year later
MILFORD — Former Milford resident Jennifer Sullivan has been missing for more than a year, and her mother is desperately seeking closure.
“She has a 26-year-old son that loves her and an 18-year-old daughter that misses her terribly ... it’s hard,” said Valerie Booth. “It’s ripped us apart. I just need some closure, you know. I think that’s what I want. I don’t even know. Are they going to find her dead someplace? I don’t know.”
Booth said Sullivan, 46, who struggled with drug addiction, went missing on Jan. 8, 2022.
“(Jennifer) was home for Christmas and went back to rehab in January,” Booth said. “She used and ended up getting kicked out, so she called me and told me she was going to find another place or come home, and then she went missing.
“She used to call every day, either me or her daughter,” Booth said. “And if she didn’t, she would call the next day telling me she was sorry she didn’t call the day before.”
After about two weeks of no word from her daughter, Booth said the family went to the police to report Sullivan as a missing person.
“We’ve hired two private detectives, and a retired policeman has been helping us as well,” she said.
The Milford Police Department did not reply to a request for comment. The department last April asked for the public’s help in finding Sullivan.
Booth said that Sullivan worked for a doctor’s office as a medical secretary, and at some point, she got involved with drugs.
“I don’t know how that happened,” she said. “Years passed, and she would get clean but get back on drugs. It was a roller coaster for her.”
Booth said at one point Sullivan had been clean for a year, but a month later she relapsed.
“Growing up she was the life of every party, and she was the favorite of all of her aunts,” she said. “She would go into these rehab houses, and I would have people contact me telling me Jen made them breakfast every day. She was just that type of person and was also very artistic.”
Booth said that Sullivan’s drug use was an ongoing challenge she faced for about 14 to 16 years.
“I have three children. I raised them all the same. I don’t know what happened,” she said. “You question yourself all the time.”
Booth has lived in Milford for 46 years, and at one point they had a pool in their backyard, which she said Sullivan would use regularly with her friends.
“She made everybody laugh,” said Booth. “She was a normal, outgoing person. And even though she used drugs, she would go to rehab and be the same person. Sometimes she would take my car, and sometimes I would call the cops to find her, but she would always come home.”
The nation’s drug problem is out of control, Booth said.
“We know firsthand how it can affect families,” she said. “Sometimes people are judgmental, and sometimes they just can’t help it. I worked with nurses, and we took care of people addicted to drugs and alcohol, and some of them just didn’t get it. It’s not something you want.”
Booth thinks her daughter couldn’t live with the guilt of the things she did.
“She would get better and then the guilt of what she did, taking my car, stealing or other things, I think continuously made her want to numb herself. But I don’t know,” she said. “But I do know she’s loved by all her cousins and family.”