| Missing 82 year-old Alzheimer patient | ||
| Loveland, Colorado Larimer County SAR and Rocky Mountain Trackers Received call for an 82-year-old Alzheimer patient that had been missing for a half an hour (he had walked off before so they knew to call right away). It was in a rural area just east of an interstate highway near Loveland. Two deputies were on the scene and did a quick search of the areas the subject had been known to go to. After that they did a great job of securing the area to preserve the scene. That made a tremendous difference in the outcome. The subject’s tracks were located by the son and went across a dirt field, then headed north on a dirt, but he soon lost the tracks. This is the same road that the son and deputies had driven down during the initial searching, so ‘most’ of his tracks were erased. A tracker was able to find a track every 50 feet or so, giving us a direction of travel. The road leads to some ponds that everyone said was his favorite place to go, however the tracks went past the gate he would have gone through to get to the ponds, and continued north. That was a blessing, because they feared he had fallen into one of the ponds. Up until now, everyone had focused their searching on the ponds and the drainage around them. The tracks however, went in a different direction. 100 yards past the gate to the ponds, the road ended and another set of the subject’s tracks were located leading through a gate and into a grass field. While standing there waiting to get more tracking teams to help work the grass field, the subject was spotted by the trackers from across the field to the Northwest. The trackers called to the subject and he was alive and well, but hung up in a single wire electric fence that was not powered up. Apparently he was trying to cross an electric fence, fell and did not try to get up. It was approximately 1/2 mile from the house. An ambulance was brought to the location and transported the subject. The search lasted less then an hour from receiving the first page. Key to success: Direction of Travel detected early on! |
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