Plea From Missing Woman’s Mom to ‘Call Me and Let Me Know She’s OK’

SHOREWOOD, IL — The mother of a woman missing since two days after Christmas said she just wants to know if her daughter is safe.

“I would just tell her to call me and let me know she’s OK,” said Carol May, the mother of Melissa Sue Ronczkowski.

Ronczkowski, 27, was last seen leaving Palos Community Hospital on Dec. 27, police said. May said her daughter called her that day and told her she was in a drug rehabilitation program.

“I know she called me from the rehab because (the caller ID) had the hospital’s phone number on it,” said May, who recalled that her daughter spoke softly, as if she didn’t want others to hear her, that last time they talked.

“She said that she was back in in-patient and she was in group (therapy) and couldn’t talk,” May said.

“She sounded quiet,” she said, “because I thought she was in a meeting.”

After not hearing from her daughter again, May said she “texted her for weeks, and then the phone stopped working. I’m afraid something happened to her.”

May, a Shorewood resident, reported her daughter as missing to the police in that town on Jan. 25.

“We’re following up on leads,” said Shorewood Deputy Police Chief Jason Barten. “Things are trickling in.”

Ronczkowski, a mother of two, has brown eyes and blond hair. She is 5-foot-3 and 145 pounds.

If you have seen Ronczkowski or have any information on her whereabouts, please call the Shorewood police at 815-725-1460 or the Textwich hotline at 562-241-7974.

May said Ronczkowski was living in Oak Forest with her boyfriend and children when she went to Palos Community Hospital and then disappeared.

“She’s never gone this long without contacting me,” May said. “That’s why I’m worried something has happened."

Melissa Sue Ronczkowski | submitted photo