Two sisters from Canada who were last seen in the 1980s have turned up safe in the United States, many years after their case went cold.

Anna and Kym Hakze, originally from Lethbridge, Canada, had not been seen since the mid 1980s. According to CBC News, their mother had unspecified contact with him in 1993, when Anna was 43 and Kim was 29. The mother filed a missing persons report in 2003, but it had long been inactive when police received a tip in 2012 about the missing women.

Eventually, Lethbridge police were able to determine that the women were living in an undisclosed United States location, and reportedly made contact with Kym Hazke, who now goes by another name, in late February.

“We were fortunate enough to have an assisting agency in the United States do a face-to-face with the one sister,” Lethbridge Police Staff Sgt. Scott Woods told CBC news.

The women reportedly left voluntarily, apparently wishing to start new lives. The younger sister, now 53, reportedly told police she didn’t know they had been the subject of a missing persons search.

“Without going into a lot of detail, and respecting their privacy, they had just left, due to some family turmoil … and had moved on, and were living their own life,” Woods told CBC.

The sisters will not be making any public statements. Police have given them contact information for their living relatives, and their brother told CBC he is hopeful he can reconnect with his sisters.

“I thought about them for all these years. I always hung onto a thread of hope because there was no confirmation either way that they were alive or not alive,” Ken Hazke CBC News, adding that because of the Privacy Act, he is unable to locate them or contact them himself.

“We have a second chance here to reconnect as a family and that is just a joyous occasion,” he said.

Photo: Lethbridge Police Services