The moment you realize your loved one with dementia is missing, every second feels critical. While the natural instinct is to immediately begin searching, having a clear action plan can make the difference in finding them quickly and safely. Through insights from John Clark, a specialized dementia search and rescue expert in Georgia, we’ve compiled three essential tips for these frightening situations.
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Additional Resources Mentioned
Georgia Emergency Search and Rescue
John Clark USA 404-309-7386
Professionally Trained in Urban Searches
Alzheimers, Dementia, Children, Evidence Recovery, Major Disaster Search, NASAR, Disaster Assistance
Takeaways
Tip 1: Make the Right First Move
Key points:
Tip 2: Provide Critical Information to Searchers
Key preparation points:
Essential information to share:
Tip 3: Know What to Expect After They’re Found
Standard procedures:
Building Better Local Resources
Not every community has specialized dementia search and rescue teams, but there are ways to improve local capabilities:
Steps to take:
Note: If you’re in Georgia, specialized dementia search and rescue services are available. Contact your local emergency services or Alzheimer’s Association chapter for more information.*
Full Episode Transcript
Nancy Treaster
When you’ve lost your loved one with dementia, it is a frightening, frightening time. Today, we’re talking about what you need to know if your loved one is missing and the information that you wanna pass on to the people who are searching for them. We have a guest today, John Clark. He is part of a specialized team that is focused here in the state of Georgia in the US on searching for people with dementia, and he’s specially trained to do that. We’re sharing three tips. John, you ready to get started?
Looking for someone with dementia has its own set of unique challenges. And it’s important that you understand what you can do to help the people who are searching for your loved one. So, John, today is gonna bring to us what we need to make sure that the searchers understand and know so that we can quickly find our loved one, because it’s a frightening situation.
John, we’re looking forward to you sharing some tips. Yes. On what we need to do. tip one is first to call emergency services. So tell us about that. Yeah.
John Clark
You have to call them immediately. Get the police there because you’re going to need them eventually. Don’t spend time searching for the person. If you’re searching for him, nobody’s coming and you hadn’t found him, then they got to come and it may take them half hour or longer to get there if they’re busy.
You have to call them first. The first thing you do is call them it’s okay to go search, but call them first. right. Then it’s okay to go search. Call me if you’re in Georgia and we’ll come. But that is the first thing you do because you have to get somebody there. Right, you’re starting the process, to speak. Right. It’s good if you find them, hey, they’ll go home. That’s fine. But you’ve to call them first.
Nancy
All right, I really like that. And then I think they should ask obviously, this is not, you’ll find when we talk a little bit later that it’s not common to have someone who specializes in dementia search and rescue. But seems to me they should ask when they do call emergency services, if there is a group specializing in dementia search and rescue that those people get involved.
John
It’s a great idea to ask that. Chances are they might not be, but they might be. Maybe somebody at the police department is specialized in it. That could be helped. That could be great. And they’ll get that person, yeah, they don’t think about that. So they’ll say, yeah. We do have somebody who’s available. Yeah, you can think about somebody.
Nancy
Okay, all right. So make a priority out of your first reaction is probably going to be to go searching and that’s fine. But call emergency services first, then go search.
John
Right, right. Okay. Then go search. Call them, call me if I’m going to call them anyway, if I’m going to go to you, but we’ll call for family. If a family member calls us, we’ll go, but we call police first.
Nancy
So if they’re in the state of Georgia, we’re gonna put it in the show notes exactly what you need to know so that you can call John and he’ll get the process started for you. All right, tip two is to tell the searchers what they need to know. And what I mean by this from our previous conversation is what do you want them to tell the searchers versus what the searchers are gonna ask? You’re gonna give our family caregivers advice on what they need, the searchers need to know whether they know it or not, right?
John
Right, right. Yeah, a lot of times the police will call you and they’ll ask you what they look like. They’ll want a picture of them. Where were they last seen? What did they last say? Something like that. And then they’ll go. You need to know more than that. They need to know more than that. Okay. What do you want them to tell them? I want them to ask the pre, you know, get a picture of the person, have a picture of at all times ready, any times, because they’re going to want to know, they’re going to want to see that. Let them have that.
Nancy Treaster
Okay, well, let’s talk about that for second because you had some good ideas. Yeah. First, one thing I’ve learned from john is on my iPhone, there, if I take a picture, I have a picture of my care receivers that have dementia, and I made them a favorites so that I’m not searching through my phone looking for a picture if the emergency happens, it’s in my favorites and I can quickly get to it. You had another example of someone.
John
Right, we had a lady one time, this was for a child who was missing, but he had autism and she would take a picture of him every day because he was likely missing. Well, then you got the clothes he’s got on too. You get the clothes he’s got on and he took it and that day she handed it to the police, this is what it looked like this morning. So you have that. Okay, so pictures are important. Pictures are very important.
You need to tell them about the medication that they’re on. What they have been talking about lately, had they been talking about going somewhere? A nickname you find out their nickname. Okay What do they call? Maybe the grandkids call them something. Maybe they were call Find out their maiden name. Maybe now she’s mrs. Jones, but before she was mrs. Smith. So you got to find that out because you’re thinking back, want to find out who the person is now, but you also want to find out who they were. So share with the searchers where they are in their diagnosis. they far enough along? A lot of people later in their dementia progression begin to sort of go backward in time. And part of going backward in time is they might be more familiar with their maiden name than they are with their married name.
Nancy
You told me a story. Some of the places that they go commonly. So for example, if someone commonly goes on a specific walk or goes down the street to somewhere.
John
You know, that’s not something that always gets asked. It’s not, it’s not. And that’s something too that the search manager may not think about. We went to search one time and we had a guy, a lady that was missing, an elderly lady. And she had a cell phone, but the searchers didn’t even go into her house. They have to check the house first because that house tells them.
tells them some things. It tells them where to look. They look at the house first. They might be in the house. They may still be in the house. So you look at the house first. They didn’t check the house this one time. And they were telling us to go search based on what this phone was pinging. The person’s pinging all over here. They told us to go to the woods. They’re very, very rarely in the woods. Stay away from woods. interesting. Stay away from the woods. And you told me something about water. Water is very important. Yeah. Water is very important. Water is
very attractive to them. Interesting. At night, anytime you’ve got to search the water. Find out where the big water, tell the police where the big water is. If there’s a big pond nearby, tell them that.
Back to the other with a lady who was missing, her phone was sitting on her table in the house. And they never searched the house. So that’s one thing we had a problem. Second, a guy comes over and he says, you ever check the senior center over there? That’s where she usually is. They check the senior center, there she was. And we one she goes commonly, right? Right, so find out where they go commonly. All right, and then you’ve had people on walks who’ve gotten lost and- We have.
Nancy Treaster
But people know what the walk routine is. So make sure the searchers know.
John
Right. We had a man about a month ago that was out walking. He was on a regular walk. He got lost and he had his phone with him. he could talk to his family, but because of dementia, he couldn’t tell them where he was. He fell down. He was laying down.
Nancy
Okay. So we want to make sure we’re telling the searchers what we think they need to know based on really your expertise and training because not all the searchers are trained in looking for someone with dementia.
John
Also, some of the things that they may have been talking about recently, if they’ve been talking about the past, that’s important. They’re looking to the past because they think Alzheimer’s, it’s, I mean, they’ve never the officers, unless they’ve dealt with Alzheimer’s, really, they have not experienced it. I have, and twice. And it’s so different. You see this person and this person’s normal looking, but inside their head, it’s not right. And it’s looking, they’re looking back on history. That’s what you’re doing. You’re looking back. Maybe he’s a couple of years ago, maybe it’s 20 years ago. Anytime he’s been talking about going back, he’s ready to walk.
And he’s restless, he’s tired, he’s restless. could have, he wanders around for many, many reasons. But he’s just restless. He may find a door unlocked and he takes off. You got to tell the officers first of all, when they get there, tell them what he’s been talking about, if he’s been talking about. Now the man the other day hadn’t been telling the family anything about where he was at. So we didn’t have that to go on, but we asked him that to find out first of all.
Nancy Treaster
Yeah. And then you also mentioned things that they’re attracted to. And this wasn’t an example of a person with dementia, but you had a good example of someone that they were able to find because the mother knew things that the child was attracted to.
John
Right, right. Yeah. The child was attracted to the child I mentioned a moment ago, who took a picture every day. He was especially attracted to air conditioners on the side of a building, in a home, in the neighborhood. A lot of times he was always found doing that the helicopter goes up and sees him sitting by an air conditioner unit and they hovered above there to the cops. That’s awesome. It was awesome. It was awesome. I didn’t make it that search. got turned around and came back. So they found him. Well, that’s way better, right? Yeah.
Nancy
Tip three is about really as a family caregiver, what can you expect emergency services or the police to do when they find your caregiver?
John,
Yeah, it depends on if they’re injured. Usually most all the time they’re gonna take them to the hospital, let them go to doctor’s office or somewhere in the police car or in an ambulance to get checked out because you don’t know what’s happened to them in the time they’ve been missing. Usually there’s nothing wrong with them. But they could be, they aren’t gonna go at night and I gotta put on my clothes, I got these on. Let me put a coat on. Right, they’re just gonna go, I’m going outside, they’re gonna go outside. They may not have shoes on. And they may be cut up, they may be. So they’re gonna take them and make sure they get to the hospital. Okay, well that’s good, that’s comforting. Absolutely, absolutely. Yep. And then that’s also where medication might come in. That is, yeah, it may come into play, yeah.
Nancy
So let’s talk a little bit about the fact that you are a specialized service in the state of Georgia, which is awesome for those of us in the state of Georgia. And people can call you directly in the state of Georgia. You will call the emergency services next and then come
or you can call emergency services and ask specifically for Georgia Emergency Search and Rescue to get involved. So when you call emergency services, you can ask them, do we have a group that specializes in dementia in our local area? And please get them involved if we do. But we know this isn’t a widespread thing because you do a lot of training here in the state of Georgia. Let’s talk about how to raise up in our local area the need for this kind of thing and where maybe we can go to find out if this exists or at least potentially get some training for our local area.
John
I think the Alzheimer’s Association is the first place you need to stop. They know the police departments and they’re in touch with them, and they can tell you who in the state is trained in search and rescue for people with dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Nancy
Okay, well that’s good to know. And then they also would be able to help you promote that training in your local area if there isn’t someone.
John
Right, and like for example in Atlanta, in Georgia really, but they’ll call, if you call the Alzheimer’s Association, the Alzheimer’s Association will call me and tell me about it in addition to call the police Okay.
Nancy
But at least if you want to raise it up, that’s a place to go and that’s a global organization. It’s a global organization. All right, wonderful. All right, well, let’s summarize. Okay. So today we talked about three main tips, things we want you to know to be prepared if your loved one goes missing. Number one, call emergency services first and then go hunt for them yourself. But just keep in mind, you want those emergency services people moving before you go out on your own.
If you’re fortunate enough to be in the state of Georgia, can call, we’ll put the number in the show notes, you can call John and he will actually call emergency services for you, but he’ll start moving as well. Second tip is slow the searchers down if they’re not specialized in dementia and make sure they have the information you know they need to know in order to find your loved one as efficiently and effectively as possible. Number three was just what to expect
emergency services to do once they find them. And wasn’t really a separate tip, but sort of some final thoughts were how to get your local area in a position to have some specialized training around searching for someone with dementia. Leverage your local Alzheimer’s Association chapter and they should be able to help you.
If you have tips that you think will be helpful for search and rescue for people with dementia, please share those tips on our Facebook page or our Instagram page. Those links are in the show notes. If you like this podcast, please follow it or subscribe to it, rate and review it and share it with your friends. We really appreciate that. When your loved one with dementia is lost, it can be extremely frightening.
So we want to make sure you have all the information you need to be as prepared as possible.
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