(NewsNation) — In 2002, construction workers in Northeast Texas located the remains of a woman. Police were unable to identify who she was.

Authorities told local news media she had been there a while, but they didn’t have much more to go on.

The woman became known as Gregg County Jane Doe 2002. There are an estimated 40,000 unidentified remains in the United States. The inability to identify these remains denies closure to friends and family members who have lost their loved ones.

But in this case, officials were able to make a breakthrough this summer with the help of a nonprofit called the DNA Doe Project, which consists of a group of volunteers who work with police to use forensic genealogy to identify unidentified remains.

The DNA Doe Project was able to use samples of DNA to trace her maternal line. They eventually identified her as Pamela Darlene Young, using DNA from her daughter to confirm her identity. In this case, Young’s family had never reported her missing, believing she lived a transient life.

“She was nowhere in the system, she was literally left out in the fields, with no one to claim her. So it’s sad, and a lot of the stories of the Does that we work are very sad,” said Pam Lauritzen, the media director at the DNA Doe Project.

Since its founding in 2017, the DNA Doe Project has helped identify dozens of unnamed deceased…