Two seniors with dementia are safe at home thanks to two seperate North Shore Rescue missions in a single day this past weekend.
The first “silver alert” came at 9 a.m. Saturday when the team was requested to help in the search for a 74-year-old Lynn Valley man with dementia. The man had apparently driven from his home to Lynn Canyon Park and left his car parked outside the locked gate.
Fearing the worst, North Shore Rescue team leader Mike Danks called in two teams to search both sides of the creek. “Luckily one of our teams located him in between the suspension bridge and Twin Falls. He was on the east side of the creek, just sitting there,” he said.
The man had apparently hiked down via trails and then slid down a steep three-metre section of the creek bank. “It was quite clear very quickly that he was not able to make it out on his own so we ended up putting him in a stretcher and doing a stretcher carry the rest of the way out,” Danks said.
North Shore Rescue members turned the man over to the B.C. Ambulance Service and local RCMP for assessment.
Authorities dispatched North Shore Rescue again at 2:30 p.m. when an 81-year-old man with Alzheimer’s disappeared from his home in Deep Cove. After two hours of looking in parks and residential neighbourhoods in the area, a search team found the man walking on Plymouth Drive.
Requests for the all-volunteer team to aid in the search for wandering seniors are becoming more frequent, Danks said. The only solution, he said, is for family members to keep a close watch.
