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The body of a woman that washed up on the shore of Lake Michigan in 1997 has been identified, according to authorities.

The DNA Diagnostics Center (DDC) and Intermountain Forensics have identified the victim as Dorothy Lynn (Thyng) Ricker, a 26-year-old woman who lived in Chicago at the time of her disappearance, Michigan State Police said in a press release on Monday.

Ricker was last seen on Oct. 2, 1997, when officers from the St. Francis Police Department in Wisconsin spoke with her while she sat on a bench by the lake around 12:30 p.m. She had not been reported missing at the time, and MSP said “nothing appeared abnormal” during the encounter.

She mentioned she was “enjoying the lakefront and the sun,” according to Monday’s press release.

Officials were able to identify Ricker with help from the DNA Doe Project, a non-profit organization that utilizes “investigative genetic genealogy” to identify unidentified remains, according to its website.

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DNA Doe Project team leader Gwen Knapp said in a statement that the process of identifying Ricker’s remains “was relatively quick,” adding, “The team is so happy to be able to give Dorothy her name back and hope the family can have some closure.”

Ricker’s body was reported to have washed ashore in Manistee County in Michigan on Oct. 27, 1997, more than three weeks after she was reported missing, according to MSP’s news release, which states, “There was nothing identifying this female at the time other than a lone earring.”

An autopsy determined that the woman had drowned.

The case went cold for years, but detectives with the MSP Cadillac Post and the MSP Missing Persons Coordination Unit gave the case another look in September 2020.

Ten months later, in July 2021, the Thyng family in Acton, Maine, was identified as “a possible familial match.”

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Knapp said DNA Doe Project ran with several leads as they looked to positively identify Ricker’s remains, including newspaper articles that “placed Dorothy in the area where her body was found” and a headstone with Ricker’s presumed death date.

“Combined with the genetics, these clues gave us the confidence that we had identified Dorothy Lynn Ricker,” Knapp explained in Monday’s statement.

However, bone samples from Ricker’s remains were not deemed “suitable for traditional testing” due to their “degraded state.” So, they were sent to Intermountain Forensics in Salt Lake City, Utah, which used advanced Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) to reach a positive identification in December 2022.

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“Forensic Genetic Genealogy continues to unlock mysteries and provide families with answers about their loved ones,” MSP said in Monday’s news release.

“Although DNA testing wasn’t possible when Dorothy Ricker died,” they added, “investigators are grateful that it brings her family some resolution today.”