By Cathy Logg
Herald Writer
SNOHOMISH — Five times in the last year, Snohomish County volunteer search and rescue personnel hunted desperately for missing residents suffering from dementia who had walked away from their homes. But twice the missing people were found only after they had died.
Tim Denhoff recalled his agony as one of those searchers.
"You only have to be involved in one," he said. "It didn’t bother me during the search. I went home, and I called my dad. Then I got off the phone and I cried. That could have been my dad."
Snohomish County sheriff’s Sgt. Danny Wickstrom, search and rescue coordinator, vowed that wouldn’t happen again. He conducted a national search for something to better the odds of finding those missing people alive.
He found Project Lifesaver, a program that puts electronic tracking bracelets on people who are likely to wander and become lost, including patients suffering from dementia. People voluntarily enroll in the program.
Sheriff Rick Bart plans to implement the program as the first one of its kind in Washington beginning in January.
"We believe it’s going to save taxpayers a huge amount of money, and it will save a lot of lives," said search and rescue volunteer Randy Fay, chairman of the Project Lifesaver committee. "This has been a huge group effort on the part of the sheriff’s office, search and rescue and our volunteers."
Fay and two others went to Virginia for training to be instructors in the program.
The search and rescue program is currently wilderness-oriented. Volunteers usually go into the mountains looking for lost or injured hikers and climbers, Fay said.
"When they get hurt, they’re very motivated to get found," he said.
But urbanization and changing demographics — including an increasingly older population — have changed the group’s focus in a growing number of searches. The number of people 85 and older is expected to double in the next 10 years.
People who suffer from Alzheimer’s, traumatic brain injuries or other types of dementia — including people with Down syndrome, or autistic children — don’t choose to be lost or disoriented, he said. More than 100,000 people in Washington state suffer from some type of dementia.
A couple of months ago, Fay was involved in a search for an Alzheimer’s patient in the Lynnwood area. They didn’t find him, he said with tears in his eyes.
"It’s a little emotional still. You don’t like to have a search end up with a person dying. He turned up two weeks later less than a mile from his home, lost and tangled in a blackberry patch. That’s not acceptable," Fay said.
Unlike injured hikers, dementia patients often are uncommunicative, can be combative, and some will actually run or hide from searchers.
"They’ll bolt and run," he said.
Seventy percent of dementia patients live with their families rather than in care facilities, and despite the best efforts of families, sometimes they slip away, Fay said. They may lose their ability to recognize familiar people and places, and may not recall their own names.
"If they get away, the anxiety and stress level for families is huge," Fay said.
A typical search involves about 50 people who organize and begin searching by grids, which can take hours.
The 30-year-old technology has been used for years in the wilderness to track wildlife, but only in recent years has it been used in a handful of other states such as Florida and Virginia for Project Lifesaver. So far, out of 162 rescues, most have been found within 30 minutes or less. The average time is 22 minutes. Search costs have dropped 80 percent.
Searches cost thousands of dollars each day, even though the volunteers donate their time. That is an additional cost outside of government, Wickstrom said.
"Money is tight," Fay said.
The sheriff’s office is looking to finance the program through corporate and individual donors. They’re hoping groups will agree to sponsor one person for one year at about $575 each.
| Life support
Donations may be sent to Project Lifesaver, 5506 Old Machias Road, Snohomish, WA 98290.
For more information or to enroll someone in the program, call the sheriff’s Project Lifesaver information line at 425-388-3825.
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Bart calls the program "pretty exciting." He’s addressed service agencies and other groups trying to raise money for it.
So far, the sheriff’s office has raised about $7,000 of the $50,000 Bart is seeking to purchase more equipment, train personnel and get the program started. They plan to start small, with two five-person teams, and see how the program grows.
Other officials are meeting with groups such as doctors, who may refer patients to the program; transit drivers, who need to recognize the bracelets and watch for people who may be lost; and police, who may see dementia patients and misinterpret them as being intoxicated.
Volunteers also will develop a database of information about people who enroll in the program so searchers have it available when they begin a search.
A demonstration of the system was conducted Friday in Snohomish. Search and rescue volunteer Perry Countryman searched for a hidden bracelet with the receiver. He found it in 13 minutes.
You can call Herald Writer Cathy Logg at 425-339-3437
or send e-mail to logg@heraldnet.com.
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