A 67-year-old woman with psychosis has been missing from Stark County since Tuesday afternoon, last seen driving away from her home on Kepler Avenue NW around 3:30 p.m. and heading toward Howard, roughly 60 to 70 miles southwest in Knox County. Robin Costanzo has brown hair, hazel eyes, stands 5 feet 5 inches tall, and weighs about 150 pounds. She was last seen wearing a blue shirt and black pants.
According to News 5 Cleveland, Costanzo is driving a bronze 2015 Nissan Murano with Ohio license plate HPG1751. Stark County authorities are asking the public for help locating her, and anyone with information on her whereabouts is urged to call 911, per the station's report.
Costanzo's home near Canal Fulton sits a drive of roughly one to one-and-a-half hours from Howard across central Ohio state routes, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation. That distance means the search likely spans multiple law enforcement jurisdictions, from Stark County to Knox County, and relies on the kind of statewide alert channels Ohio built specifically for cases like this one.
How Ohio's Missing Adult Alert Network Works
Ohio's Endangered Missing Adult Alert system requires that a missing person be at least 65 years old or have a medically diagnosed mental impairment that puts them at credible risk of serious physical harm or death, according to the Ohio Attorney General. The Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation administers the program, which the state created in 2008 to protect vulnerable adults who don't qualify for child AMBER alerts, and BCI established a dedicated Missing Persons Unit in 2011 to consolidate search resources for cases like Costanzo's.
When an alert involves a vehicle, BCI coordinates with the Ohio Department of Transportation to broadcast the vehicle's details on regional dynamic highway signs and pushes alerts across law enforcement terminals statewide. The unit also actively queries automated license plate readers and the Law Enforcement Automated Data System to trace vehicles across Ohio roadways during active searches. Whether plate readers along corridors such as US-30 or SR-36 have picked up any hits on Costanzo's bronze Murano remains an open question, as does whether Knox County authorities have joined ground searches near Howard.
A Medical Emergency, Not Just a Missing-Persons Case
Clinical guidance from Yale Medicine notes that individuals experiencing a psychotic episode may suffer from severely altered perception or disorientation, which can significantly impair spatial awareness and safety judgment. That guidance underscores why rapid medical evaluation and de-escalation, rather than treating the case as a routine disappearance, is considered the clinical priority when law enforcement encounters someone in psychiatric crisis. It is not known whether Costanzo has access to any necessary medications while she remains missing.
Ohio's alert system has a strong track record: in 2022, BCI issued 146 Endangered Missing Adult Alerts across 38 counties, and all but one of those missing individuals was safely recovered or identified, per the Attorney General's office. Stark County's population exceeds 370,000 residents, and adults 65 and older now outnumber children under 18 there, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, a demographic shift that has made searches for missing seniors and vulnerable adults an increasingly frequent part of local law enforcement work.
Similar Searches Across Stark County This Month
Costanzo's disappearance is at least the third search this month in Stark County involving a vulnerable adult. Hoodline previously reported that a 77-year-old Canton man with dementia was found safe Tuesday after a golf outing went wrong, and a 70-year-old Plain Township woman triggered her third walkaway alert since April earlier this month. The Stark County Sheriff's Office, which serves the county's more than 370,000 residents, maintains a 24-hour non-emergency dispatch line at 330-430-3800 for tips that don't require an immediate 911 response.
Anyone with information on Robin Costanzo's location should call 911, as authorities continue to ask for the public's help finding her.
