Missing Oak Brook college student found

Nearly three full days after his daughter went missing, Bernie O'Connell had all but given up hope that he'd ever see her alive again.

Then the phone rang.

Police said 20-year-old Katherine "Katie" O'Connell of Oak Brook contacted a relative after 7:15 p.m. Tuesday - some 64 hours after she was last seen - to report she was safe.

No further details were immediately made public. Her family accompanied police late that evening to pick her up in Chicago.

"She is alive and well," Oak Brook Officer Mark Kozlowski confirmed. "We're very relieved."

One hour before hearing the good news, her heartbroken father made a plea for his daughter's safe return. The 2007 Montini Catholic High School graduate attends College of DuPage with hopes of transferring to the University of Tennessee.

"All I want is for Katie to come home," said Bernie O'Connell, fighting back tears and trying to speak of his youngest child in the present tense. "I'm trying to keep the faith, but this is so hard."

He added: "She lights up every room she walks into. We love her so much."

Katie O'Connell hadn't been seen since about 3 a.m. Sunday when she left a group of about 10 friends, mostly from high school, at a River North bar near Illinois and Dearborn in Chicago.

Bernie O'Connell said the group was celebrating one of their birthdays and traveled into the city in a limousine, which was supposed to bring them all back together at a home in Willowbrook.

Before talking to his daughter again, the father said he believed she voluntarily left the nightclub with "a friend or two."

"The bad news is at 1 o'clock after drinking, people are not thinking like they should," he said.

Police said the underage woman was carrying a fraudulent ID, which is likely how she gained entry to the nightclub. O'Connell's father reported her missing Sunday evening after he reached out to her friends and realized she was missing.

The media broadcast the blue-eyed, brown-haired girl's photo Tuesday afternoon, as her loved ones posted fliers in the city's River North neighborhood where she was last seen. Both Chicago and Oak Brook police investigated the disappearance.

"There's going to be quite a lot of questions," Kozlowski said.