This site is dedicated to assisting civilian victims of war in Southeast Asia. Last night, though, I had such a dramatic experience that I think it is appropriate to go off topic.
My wife took a call late last night from our daycare provider. Her father was missing and she was calling to tell us she may not be able to open in the morning. Her father has Alzheimer's and was once an avid hunter. In the past he had wandered off thinking it was deer hunting season in the middle of summer.
Brita, the CPI intern, and I left the house to join the search party to look for him. We spent two hours with Dorset's fire chief driving while I called his name on the truck's loudspeaker and searched the woods with a floodlight...it was raining...it was cold...and where we are is pretty heavily wooded. The streams are swollen from a long Vermont winter's thaw on top of all the rain we have been getting.... it was close to midnight...we were all scared that we may have had seen our friend Fred for the last time.
Luckily, and wisely, Fred's daughters had purchased him a GPS enabled bracelet. The State Police initially could not find his signal... but eventually it started to chirp out by a dairy farm not far from his house.
We scoured the barn... no sign of Fred... the searchlights showed nothing but cows... I had been calling his name for hours... I called out one more time and he responded!
Another searcher and I jumped the fence and into the cow pasture (into near knee-deep mud and manure) and ran up into the bushes. There was Fred, wet, scared... and telling us he was out there trying to fix the furnace because he was so cold. He had been out in the elements for over four hours.
Please, if you know of someone with Alzheimer's please read this and get them a bracelet. Today.
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