Gaffney Police Department Det. Jott Blackwell was able to leave work Friday with a somewhat rare feeling for someone in his line of work.

“It’s nice when everybody’s happy,” he said. “At least I can go home knowing I made somebody’s day.”

For such an occurrence to be possible, however, that proverbial stars aligned with amazing precision.

In late July, Patricia Cheatham, a Tennessee woman with local roots, contacted Gaffney police with a missing person report. She hadn’t seen her adult daughter, Sandra Killian, since July 2007, when she was last spotted in the parking lot of a local store. One relative, who still lives locally, said the uncertainty of not knowing what had happened to the woman was difficult.

Blackwell turned to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Agency and its Fusion Center, which were able to track Killian to Tennessee, where Blackwell learned she spent most of 2009.

“I found a hotel she was living at in Tennessee,” he said. “I called the hotel, and it just so happened I talked to the right person. (The person at the hotel) remembered her and told me the boyfriend’s name.”

And perhaps even better, the person at the hotel remembered that Killian’s boyfriend had taken a job in Ohio, working for a bakery that did contract work for a major fast food restaurant chain.

Following some additional research of Ohio bakeries, Blackwell zeroed in on a bakery in Norwalk, Ohio, where he was able to get in touch with the bakery’s human resources director. When he asked about the name of Killian’s boyfriend, Blackwell noted, “She (the human resources director) said he works for them, and not only that, ‘He’s my cousin.’“

Within a few subsequent phone calls, Blackwell was able to talk with Killian and was able to reconnect the mother and daughter by telephone.

During their talks, he discovered that Killian had been trying to contact her mother as well, but didn’t know how since her mother remarried, changed her name and moved from Gaffney.

“She couldn’t find her mom, just like her mom couldn’t find her daughter,” he said.

Blackwell said he was appreciative of all the help he got from SLED.

“This case would not have been a success without Special Agent Scott Williams of SLED and the SLED Fusion Center,” he said.

He also recognized that this investigation of a missing person report went much smoother than typical.

“It really was countless breaks,” he said, “one after the other.”

Cheatham couldn’t be reached for immediate comment over the weekend about the successful conclusion of the search.