AUBURN – It had been five days since Claire Young saw her husband, William.

Five sleepless nights. Five days of constant worry.

“We’re waiting and praying and praying, and every time the phone rings you wonder, ‘Is it … is it … is it?'” she said Friday.

William – known to friends and family as Bill – has dementia. He took the family’s mint-green Toyota RAV4 and drove away from his Auburn home Monday. Although a national alert had been issued and police and volunteers had been searching for him in Maine for days, there had been no sign of the 77-year-old military veteran and retired educator.

“It’s just one of those things where we need to try to find Mr. Young and get him home,” Auburn police officer Marshall McCamish said.

William Young was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease five years ago. He’d started to lose his sense of direction, first while driving in Canada with his wife, then while driving to the Auburn Post Office.

“I said, ‘Bill, something is wrong!'” his wife remembered. “He said, ‘Yes, Claire, I think something is wrong with my brain.'”

A specialist soon diagnosed Alzheimer’s. William was put on medication, but his memory continued to slide. Over the years, his sense of direction got worse and he grew skittish around crowds and in traffic. He started misplacing things. He forgot how common items, such as hairdryers, worked and he began obsessively checking his home’s locks at night, forgetting that he’d already done it.

His wife said she and his doctor recommended his driver’s license be revoked when it came up for renewal in 2007, but William was lucid then and able to hold a conversation and answer questions, so the license was renewed. Because his sense of direction remained an issue, Claire and William made an agreement: He would not drive without her.

But sometimes he did.

His driving time was generally limited to mornings, when he would drop his wife off at Walton Elementary School, where she worked as a teaching assistant. He would spend the day at home and then pick her up again in the afternoon.

On Monday, he dropped her off as usual.

“We waved ‘bye to one another and I thought his eyes looked funny,” she said. “You know, glazed or staring or something.”

It was odd, but not enough to alarm her. Then, shortly before 9:30 a.m., a teacher saw William driving down Mary Carroll Street. Claire assumed he was going to the local Dunkin’ Donuts to get coffee, a treat he sometimes indulged in.

But there was no answer when she tried calling him at home at 10 a.m. There was no answer at 10:30. Or at 11. Or the rest of the day.

Claire denied anything was wrong.

“I thought, ‘Oh, well, it’s good weather. You can’t expect him to be in the house.’ I thought, ‘Claire, he’s raking the lawn,'” she said.

When William didn’t show up at 3 p.m. to drive her home, she walked. She expected to find him on the lawn.

He wasn’t there.

Inside, William’s daily written memory exercises were done, but the bed hadn’t been made and the dishes hadn’t been washed – household chores he typically finished in the morning. His favorite bread, which his wife had set aside for lunch, was untouched. The family’s car was gone.

“I went, ‘God, no! No!’ I knew he was driving somewhere,” she said.

Police said William was last seen standing next to his vehicle in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot in New Auburn around 10:10 a.m. Monday.

Police entered his name in a nationwide computer network and contacted police in Connecticut, where William has a family connection. In Maine, police and trained volunteers have searched the area and handed out missing-person fliers. They planned to search Auburn again Saturday morning, focusing more attention on parking lots, side roads and areas leading into the woods. William is likely to avoid crowds and high-traffic areas that make him anxious.

“We are asking for help from the citizens of Maine,” William’s uncle, Paul R. Bernard of Turner wrote in an e-mail to area news organizations this week.

Bernard said his uncle was in the U.S Army during the Korean War and served as assistant principal of Lisbon High School for 12 years. He started the adult education program in Lisbon and founded and was adviser to the Student Council.

The couple’s 1997 SUV has a Maine veterans license plate, number 10029. It had nearly a full tank of gas, police said.

William has gray hair and hazel eyes, stands 5 feet, 9 inches tall and weighs roughly 190 pounds. He was last seen wearing dark-gray pants, a dark-green shirt, light-green L.L. Bean jacket, black sneakers and a tan ball cap. He was carrying about $45 in cash, and his driver’s license.

His wife said it would be the last license he carries if she has anything to say about it.

“It’s supposed to be renewed in 2011,” she said. “It won’t be now.”

Anyone with information about William Young’s whereabouts is asked to contact Auburn police at 207-333-6650.