State worker goes missing

Police find work car in Charlotte

Sometime on Wednesday afternoon, insurance examiner Sallie Rohrbach left a Charlotte agency where she'd been investigating a complaint. She was supposed to meet a friend that evening, but she never showed.

The next day, she didn't show up for a meeting with her supervisor at the state Department of Insurance. Her work and personal cell phones were turned off.

On Friday, her colleagues called police.

Rohrbach's state-owned car was found Sunday at a fast-food restaurant -- but there's no indication that authorities are any closer than that to finding the Angier woman.

Rohrbach, 44, of 839 Chalybeate Springs Road in Angier, was last seen at Dilworth Insurance Agency on South Boulevard in Charlotte between 3 and 4 p.m. Wednesday, a Department of Insurance spokeswoman said.

Her husband, Tim Rohrbach, said Sunday that he last heard from his wife Tuesday afternoon and that she'd missed appointments Wednesday and Thursday evenings to see high school friends who live in the Charlotte area. He said he didn't worry when he didn't hear from his wife Wednesday and Thursday, because they usually communicate by e-mail and he knew she had plans to be out.

"I just didn't think another thing about it," he said.

He first learned that his wife was missing when someone from the Department of Insurance called.

The two, who met as students at UNC-Wilmington, have been married since 1984. They don't have children, but they love pets, Rohrbach's husband said.

"Mostly cats and dogs, but she's been known to raise rabbits, and anything else that shows up," he said.

Sallie Rohrbach, who attended Garner High School, has worked for the Department of Insurance for eight years and has been an agency examiner since 2003.

"I'm convinced that it's some type of foul play," Tim Rohrbach said. His wife wouldn't disappear of her own volition, he said, but added he doesn't think her disappearance is related to the audit of the insurance company.

Department spokeswoman Chrissy Pearson said the complaint Sallie Rohrbach was investigating was administrative rather than criminal. The department has armed law enforcement officers, but Rohrbach is a civilian employee, she said.

Eight of the department's law enforcement officers traveled to Charlotte on Sunday to help investigate her disappearance.

"We're just very concerned for her safety," Pearson said, urging anyone with information to call authorities.

Tim Rohrbach said he spent most of Saturday in Charlotte with police.

"Once they started working on it, they've been working around the clock," he said.

Tim Rohrbach, an engineer at the John Deere plant in Fuquay-Varina, said his wife normally works in the Triangle but went to Charlotte as a substitute for a colleague.

He said he was surprised to hear his wife's car was found at a Bojangles on the corner of West Boulevard and South Tryon Street.

"She's not a big fan of fast food," he said. "She might have gone there to get a Diet Pepsi, but she didn't go there to eat."

Police set up a command center in the parking lot of Price's Chicken Coop, a take-out restaurant near the Bojangles, and spent the morning canvassing the area. But as of early afternoon Sunday, officials had shared little more than a confirmation that the vehicle they found is the car Rohrbach was using.

Anyone who sees Rohrbach or has information about her disappearance is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (704) 334-1600.

(Charlotte Observer staff writer Clay Barbour contributed to this report.)