Silver Alert program helps find missing kupuna
Apr. 22—1/2
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COURTESY PANGELINAN FAMILY
Missing person poster of Francisco Pangelinan.
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COURTESY PANGELINAN FAMILY
Francisco Pangelinan, left, daughter Patricia Arde and wife Helga Pangelinan pose during Christmas 2021.
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It's been 11 months of anguish since Patricia Arde's 86-year-old father wandered off and vanished in Kapolei near Home Depot and Costco.
Although he wasn't diagnosed with dementia or
Alzheimer's disease, Francisco I. Pangelinan had been showing signs of memory loss before May 15, when surveillance cameras showed him frantically searching for his car before he was lost from sight. The retired U.S. Army sergeant major was otherwise in good health and had his wallet and identification on him, but had forgotten his cellphone that day, Arde said.
"He's such a good person, he would just help anyone. It's just so frustrating. Not knowing if something horrible happened to him, whether he's in pain, or lost or injured, just makes us heartsick every day. ... Maybe he did get hurt and is just laying somewhere. He just hasn't been discovered.
"It's our prayer that someone out there who may not know he's missing, maybe somebody's taken him in and is helping him," she said, choking back tears.
Arde recently testified at the state Legislature in March about the need to establish a Silver Alert program, modeled after the statewide Maile Amber Alert program to find missing youth. She believes that if such a program was available to notify the public about Pangelinan's disappearance, he would have been found by now.
Senate Bill 2305, also known as the Silver Alert bill, introduced by Sen. Brandon Elefante (D, Aiea-
Halawa-Pearl City), has advanced to the House and Senate conference committee, which could soon send it to the governor for signature. The bill, championed by the Alzheimer's Association-Hawaii, has garnered widespread support from
individuals, government agencies and other
organizations.
The bill would establish a comprehensive alert system to help locate and safeguard missing persons who are
65 or older, cognitively impaired or developmentally disabled. The state Department of Law Enforcement has requested $250,000 to launch the program. (The Maile Amber Alert focuses on youth 17 or younger who are believed to be abducted and in life-threatening situations; it is similar to other Amber Alert programs throughout the nation.)
Currently, there is no coordinated system in place to provide information to the community about missing older adults, said LJ R. Duenas, executive director of the Alzheimer's Association. The Silver Alert program would enable law enforcement to broadcast a text message within a 1- or 2-mile radius of the last known whereabouts of a missing person. Anyone with a cellphone would receive the alert to call 911 or CrimeStoppers if they see the person.
"Time is of the essence, and not everybody is on social media or watching television or listening to the radio," Duenas said, though the alert would also be available to
media and other emergency-response agencies.
Alzheimer's disease diminishes a person's ability to recognize familiar surroundings and faces, and wandering is a common behavior that can lead to becoming disoriented and lost. The association and others that advocate for kupuna are taking a "more proactive approach so we can help prevent wandering," Duenas said.
"Even if a person is found, they may fall, they may injure themselves, they may injure someone else. We know if they experience falls, they could be bedridden, and things go downhill from there," he said. "The population is aging. We need to prepare our law enforcement personnel and the community because it's just going to get worse before it gets better. We want to save lives and we want to save heartaches."
Arde said her husband, Gerry Arde, went to Home Depot in Kapolei to look for her father after her mother became worried when he didn't return after two hours. Pangelinan was having trouble remembering street names and directions to familiar places. (Gerry Arde had given Pangelinan an Apple AirTag tracker that he was supposed to keep in his wallet, but it was left in his car.)
Arde left her office to join the search with friends and relatives late into the night. Friends who worked at the nearby Costco also helped look for him; the store's surveillance footage showed Pangelinan crossing the street to Costco from the Home Depot parking lot, then crossing the street to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser building. Thereafter, there is no footage of him anywhere, she said.
A major setback from the start was not being able to get camera footage from Home Depot until eight or nine days after Pangelinan went missing because it had to come from a mainland location. Police did an aerial search by helicopter after viewing the footage, which showed her father parking on the lumberyard side of the store but exiting on the garden side, frantically looking for his car. It was more than a week before the first news broadcast aired on local television stations, she said.
"So much valuable time was lost in the first few days that Dad went missing that we really had no chance of finding him," Arde said. "I honestly wish I had hired a private investigator the first day or so."
When she posted her father's missing-person poster on social media, even strangers were kind enough to volunteer their help; community group searches continued in the following months.
In testimony before the House Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs on March 20, Arde wrote, "Perhaps not finding his car in the store parking lot triggered something in Dad's brain. We don't know what he was thinking and why he didn't stop to ask anyone for help. His credit cards have not been accessed. ... Did Dad suffer an injury once it turned dark and could be somewhere that we haven't looked? Did Dad try to walk home and get lost? Did Dad wander into a homeless
encampment?"
Arde said it's extremely difficult not to have answers to these questions, any other clues or closure. "And I feel like, what else can we do, so much time has gone by and I feel like, sometimes I start to lose hope that we're never going to find him."
"That's why this Silver Alert would be so beneficial, to save one more family from having to go through this. I just hope it passes and it could be implemented as soon as possible," she said.
