A 36-year-old Nashville mother has not been seen or heard from in two weeks after she was dropped off at a Donelson laundromat, and her family is now offering a $1,000 reward for information that brings her home. Courtney Reese told relatives on August 18 that she planned to do laundry and meet a friend near the business, but she never resurfaced, and her phone now goes straight to voicemail.
According to WKRN News 2, Reese’s uncle dropped her off at the laundromat at about 1 p.m. that day, and police say that is the last confirmed sighting before she disappeared. The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department is investigating her disappearance as a missing-person case, and it is asking anyone who has seen Reese or knows her whereabouts to come forward.
Chasity Desimone, who is caring for Reese’s 3-month-old son while the search continues, told the outlet that Reese always called her every morning and every night without fail — a routine that makes the silence since August 18 especially alarming to the family. Reese sent her last known message that evening, a text to her mother asking to be picked up from the same Donelson address at 5:52 p.m. Her family has not heard from her since.
Surveillance Footage Offers a Partial Trail
Surveillance video reviewed by the family shows Reese walking farther down the road before she disappeared from view near a Domino’s, according to Desimone’s account relayed to the station. Complicating that lead, an employee told the outlet that the Domino’s security camera points toward the business itself rather than the sidewalk where Reese was reportedly walking, leaving investigators with only a partial picture of her final movements. Detectives are now working to reconstruct her path in the hours after that last text.
Family Points to Mental Health Struggles
Reese’s relatives say she had recently left a group home in Lebanon, a community roughly 25 to 30 miles east of Donelson along the Interstate 40 corridor, according to geographic data from Expedia. Desimone said not being with her son really depressed Reese, and the family believes she may have struggled with postpartum depression as well as broader mental health challenges. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that roughly 1 in 8 women in the United States, or about 12% to 13%, experience symptoms of postpartum depression after giving birth, underscoring how common — and serious — the condition can be.
“We need to get her home,” Desimone said, describing the family’s urgency as the search stretches on.
How Tennessee Law Speeds Up the Search
Donelson falls under the jurisdiction of the Metro Nashville Police Department’s Hermitage Precinct, based at 3701 James Kay Lane, which covers the eastern Davidson County communities surrounding Donelson and Nashville International Airport. Under Tennessee Code § 38-6-121, the state has eliminated mandatory waiting periods for reporting missing individuals, requiring police to immediately open an investigation and enter the person into the National Crime Information Center database. A companion statute, Tennessee Code § 38-6-125, known as the Help Find the Missing Act, further requires agencies to submit missing citizen reports into national forensic and law enforcement databases regardless of the person’s age.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation also maintains a 24-hour statewide hotline, 1-800-TBI-FIND, to coordinate tips and support local departments when missing individuals cross county lines — a real possibility in this case, given the distance between the Lebanon group home Reese recently left and the Donelson laundromat where she was last confirmed seen. The agency also runs the TBI Find mobile app and the SafeSeniorTN initiative’s TN CareKit, which lets families pre-upload photos and medical profiles for faster dispatch during missing person emergencies.
Reese’s case is one of hundreds of thousands processed nationally each year; federal data from the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System shows more than 530,000 missing person cases are entered into law enforcement databases annually, with more than 26,000 active cases open nationwide as of August 2026. Middle Tennessee agencies handle similar cases regularly, including an August search by the Clarksville Police Department for an at-risk 24-year-old man reported missing after concerning mental health posts.
Anyone with information about Courtney Reese’s whereabouts is asked to contact the Metro Nashville Police Department at 615-862-8600. Her family’s $1,000 reward remains on the table as they wait for any lead that might bring her back.
