LOCATE LOST WITH LESS CONFUSION
By Ramsey Campbell and Sentinel Columnist
I first heard the helicopters circling overhead, then I saw a sheriff's department bloodhound sniffing alongside U.S. Highway 441.
It didn't take me long to guess that another old person was on the loose again in Lake County.
I have a lot of sympathy for Alzheimer's patients and other elderly people who suffer from different forms of dementia. My mother was afflicted for years and was always trying to wander off.
But routinely calling out the bloodhounds and choppers every time anyone wanders away from home seems excessive, especially in a county that has so many elderly and nursing home residents
In this case, they were looking for a confused 91-year-old man. If the bloodhounds and copters did find him, they were more likely to cause cardiac arrest than anything else.
Why helicopters and dogs anyway?
Sure, you can see a long way when you are up in the air. But the last time I checked, Lake County was awash in silver-haired residents.
The deputies in the helicopters must have been going just as crazy as the dogs counting all the oldsters they saw below. How they ever could expect to find the one they were looking for from the air is beyond me. One bald or silver dome looks pretty much the same as another from on high.
Of course the chopper didn't find this particular gentleman.
The target of the search-and-rescue mission eventually was found in a neighbor's back yard, less than a block away from his apartment.
Monday morning quarterbacking is easy, but I would have thought the fact that he left his aluminum walker behind was at least a clue that this missing person wasn't too far away. I'm not a detective, but first I would have checked the neighborhood very, very thoroughly.
He was reported missing early in the day, and deputies had plenty of time to scour the neighborhood before pushing the panic button. After all, the subject wasn't a fleeing felon or a danger to anyone -- he was just a confused old man. It would have saved a lot of effort and tax dollars had officials shown a little better judgment.
It reminded me of the Sumter County search for Cheryl Barnes, who at 17 vanished from her Bushnell home.
Thanks to runaway hormones, there's no shortage of runaway teens, and law enforcement officials would be running around in circles trying to find them all.
Usually law enforcement doesn't get too anxious unless there's some reason to believe foul play is involved. But that didn't stop Sumter County from launching a massive search for the missing teen. They were about to drain swamps for her body when she materialized unharmed in the Big Apple.
If law enforcement officials are determined to bring out the bloodhounds and choppers, they ought to go after real missing persons.
It has been 70 years since anyone's seen New York Supreme Court Judge Joseph Crater. He had a meal at Billy Ha's Chop House on Aug. 6, 1930, and then vanished.
D.B. Cooper hijacked a Northwest Airlines flight Nov. 24, 1971. He jumped out of the plane with a parachute and $200,000 in cash and was never seen again.
Michael Rockefeller, the son of Nelson Rockefeller, was buying art in New Guinea when he disappeared off the coast on Nov. 18, 1961.
And, of course, there is Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa. Where has he been hiding these last 25 years? By now, Hoffa would be 87. Where better to hide out than Lake County?
I could swear the old guy in the Hawaiian shirt at the Publix checkout last week bore an amazing resemblance.