Missing Chicago Woman Last Seen at Midway
- Kelly Cole-Duke, a 41-year-old Michigan woman, was reported missing after family says she flew alone to Chicago Midway during a manic episode Monday. - Chicago police listed her as an endangered missing person on May 5, saying she was last seen near Midway Airport after contact ended May 4. - The case matters because family says Cole-Duke traveled without bipolar medication, raising concern that a routine flight quickly became a crisis.
A missing-person case out of Chicago has gotten urgent for a pretty specific reason — family says Kelly Cole-Duke didn’t just disappear after a flight, she arrived at Midway Airport while in a manic episode and without her bipolar medication. That changes the stakes fast. This is not a vague “haven’t heard from her” situation. It’s a time-sensitive search for a 41-year-old woman whose family says she may be medically vulnerable. ### Who is missing? Kelly Cole-Duke is a 41-year-old woman from Michigan. Chicago police put out an endangered missing person alert naming her, listing her as 5-foot-2 and 180 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes, and saying her last contact was on May 4, 2026. ids to Chicago and was believed to have been last seen at Midway Airport on Monday evening, May 4. By Tuesday, May 5, Chicago police had posted the endangered missing alert. WGN’s report and the police notice line up on the key point — Midway is where the trail goes cold. ### Why are police treating this as endangered? Because this isn’t just a travel mix-up. Family members told WGN that Cole-Duke has bipolar disorder and was in a manic episode when she traveled. They also said she flew without her medication. That combination is the part that makes the case feel so urgent — the worry is not only that she is missing, but that she may need help and may not be making safe decisions. ### Why does Midway matter so much? Midway is a huge transit hub, and that makes early hours especially important in a case like this. A person can leave by rideshare, CTA, bus, another flight, or simply blend into the crowd. Once a vulnerable traveler leaves the airport footprint, the search gets wider and fuzzier. That’s why the police alert centers so tightly on the area around Midway Airport. ### What do police actually say? The Chicago Police Department’s public posting is pretty bare-bones, which is normal for these alerts. It identifies Cole-Duke as an endangered missing person, gives the case number JK242483, says she was last seen in the area of Midway Airport, and asks anyone with information to contact Area One Detectives. The public notice is meant to widen the search, not explain the whole backstory. ### What does the family add? The family fills in the part the police alert does not — why they’re scared. Their account turns this from a standard missing-person bulletin into a medical-vulnerability case. WGN’s story says relatives believe she flew from Grand Rapids during a manic episode and without medication, which helps explain why they went public so quickly. ### What’s unresolved right now? A lot. There’s no public indication that Cole-Duke has been found, no confirmed sighting after Midway, and no public explanation for where she may have been headed in Chicago. So the live question is simple but hard: did she leave the airport with a plan, or did the airport just become the last place anyone can firmly place her? ### Bottom line The core of this story is not the airport. It’s vulnerability. Kelly Cole-Duke appears to have landed in one of the busiest transit points in Chicago while her family feared she was in psychiatric distress. That’s why this case is getting attention now — every hour without contact matters more when the missing person may also be in the middle of a mental health crisis.
