Editor's Note: This article was updated on 10/21/25 with minor additional details about the ongoing investigation.
Lia Smith ’26 was reported missing to the Middlebury Police Department on Sunday afternoon. Smith's father filed the report after not hearing back from her via cell phone and communicating with her friends, who last saw her in a building on campus at 9 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 17.
Smith, 21, is 5’11 and about 160 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes. She is a double computer science and statistics major from California, and previously competed on the college's Women’s Swimming and Diving team. She is a part of the Chess Club and Women in Computer Science.
Police are actively searching for Smith with college Public Safety, and request that anyone with information about her whereabouts contact the police department at 802-388-3191.
“If anybody knows anything, even if it’s a friend that’s just afraid that maybe the information they may have might not be useful, please share it with the police because anything is worth us looking into and trying to decipher whether it benefits the investigation,” Sergeant Nathan Hayes said on Monday morning.
According to a statement released by Middlebury Police on Monday afternoon, a drone camera has been deployed as part of the search.
Hayes declined to provide further details on the police department’s investigative procedures in case their publicization hinders search efforts.
“If there’s any concern, or if Lia thought she was in trouble for anything, she’s not, nobody’s in trouble for this,” Hayes said. “We just truly want to find out where she is and make sure she’s safe.”
In an email to the college community Sunday night, Vice President for Student Affairs Smita Ruzicka and Associate Vice President of Safety Demitria Kirby alerted students, faculty and staff of Smith’s disappearance. In a follow-up email Monday night, they shared available care and counseling resources available to students and reiterated their commitment to finding Smith.
“We know it can be difficult to experience this uncertainty and we will provide regular updates and share more information as it becomes available,” the email reads.
Madeleine Kaptein '25.5 (she/her) is the Editor in Chief.
Madeleine previously served as a managing editor, local editor, staff writer and copy editor. She is a Comparative Literature major with a focus on German and English literatures and was a culture journalism intern at Seven Days for the summer of 2025.
