WINNIPEG — It was cold and the middle of the night Monday when Jill Tardiff walked out of the condo she shared with her husband, and hasn’t been seen since.
“Something changed in Jill,” her best friend of 56 years, Debbie Lazaruk said. “I don’t know if it was medication related, they were tweaking her medication.”
Lazaruk says 61-year old Tardiff was normally happy and outgoing but had been fighting severe depression for years. She was released last week after a month long stay at the Sevens Oaks Hospital.
“I’m sure they felt they did what they should do but now we’re saying, ‘How can you still be this ill?’,” Lazaruk said. “How does that happen that they felt she was stable and she wasn’t.”
Winnipeg Police Missing Person Unit is investigating and will be using video surveillance from the stores along Provencher to determine what direction Tardiff went. And the Red River is just metres away from her home and on Tuesday officers were seen scanning the riverbank by boat.
“You just don’t know what might have happened,” Constable Eric Hofley said. “If people can take the time and check their surrounding properties then absolutely that might save investigators and the family a lot of time.”
Tardiff’s brother Ted Wolstencroft says hope is fading with every passing hour.
“With the illness there’s some chance of self harm,” Wolstencroft said.
Tardiff was retired but used to be a principal and vice principal at several Winnipeg High Schools.
She recently moved to a new condo with her husband, starting a new life, but the struggle with mental health issues continued.
“I can’t imagine my world without Jill,” Lazaruk said. “It’s been Deb and Jill for 56 years so I miss her.”
Tardiff is 5 feet 4 inches tall, 120 pounds with short brown hair that has blonde highlights. She was wearing a light coloured t-shirt with horizontal stripes, black pants, blue and white running shoes and glasses and was carrying a blue fabric grocery bag. Anyone with information on Tardiff’s whereabouts is asked to call police at 204-986-6250.
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