Rescuers Find Woman Who Left Boarding Home 87-Year-Old Had Wandered Away From Facility 17 Hours Earlier
An 87-year-old Spokane Valley woman was found resting in some bushes Thursday afternoon, 17 hours after she had wandered away from an assisted living facility.
Alice M. Wells, who suffers from dementia and sometimes thinks she’s back in North Dakota or Montana, disappeared from Bethany Home, 9111 E. Upriver Drive, about 7 p.m. Wednesday, the facility’s operator said.
Rescuers located the 5-foot-2, 110-pound woman just after noon Thursday. She was awake and appeared healthy, said sheriff’s deputy Tom Mattern, Spokane County’s search and rescue coordinator.
A half-dozen deputies had searched for Wells on Wednesday night without success. She was wearing a sweater and slacks but no coat, raising fears of hypothermia.
Thursday morning, 30 members of the county’s search and rescue team, along with several search dogs, began a door-to-door search of the area. They traveled from Argonne Road east to Plantes Ferry Park and from the Spokane River north to Upriver Drive.
A German shepherd found Wells resting on the ground only about 200 yards east of Bethany Home.
Wells was taken to Holy Family Hospital for observation.
She had wandered from the 32-resident boarding home several times in the last week, said Mattern, but she had been found quickly each time. Her daughter has been in the process of finding a higher-security facility for her, he said.
Wells is the second elderly resident to wander away from home and become lost overnight in Spokane County in the last few weeks, Mattern said. Normally, such incidents are rare, he said.
, DataTimes