AUBURN – Claire and William Young were all set to quietly celebrate spending 35 years together Monday evening. Instead, the Auburn woman will spend most of the day making funeral arrangements for the man she fell in love with all those years ago.

The search for William “Bill” Young, who had been missing since last Monday, came to a sad end Sunday morning when the Maine Warden Service announced that Young’s body had been found shortly before 11 a.m.

Claire Young said she and her sister-in-law started out relieved Sunday when two Maine Game Wardens showed up at her door and told them they’d found her husband. But relief soon turned to grief as the second part of their somber message came – the 77-year-old Auburn man was found less than 10 miles from where searchers found his SUV Saturday.

Young’s body was found about 9 road miles – or 5.4 straight walking miles – from where his vehicle was located Saturday afternoon near Spencer Bay, just west of Kokadjo, according to a news release issued by Deborah Turcotte, spokesperson for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

“He was very gentle. Very, very kind,” Claire Young said of her husband, whom she met shortly after his first wife died of cancer. “He was very dedicated to his family and very dedicated to his job.”

Young, a military veteran, spent most of his career at Lisbon High School – the last 12 of which he served as the school’s assistant principal. When he wasn’t attending to administrative duties at the school, Claire Young said her husband helped advise student groups and volunteered with area organizations even after he retired.

“He just gave and gave and gave. And God gave him the strength to do these things,” she said.

And then, five years ago came the news that would change the couple’s lives forever. After several episodes of losing his sense of direction – first while driving in Canada on a trip with his wife and later on simple trips around town – Bill Young was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Despite being placed on medication, his sense of direction grew worse and his memory started to slide.

Bill Young’s constant desire to help likely drew him to the remote area around Moosehead Lake. Claire Young told Maine Game Wardens that she believed her husband traveled to the area to help search for the South Portland woman found there the week before. The couple talked about the story and she expressed concern over not ever wanting to have to face a similar situation with her husband.

While appreciative of all the assistance she’d received in the last week from area authorities, Claire Young said she hopes this tragedy will help raise awareness about the need to organize searches more quickly when an elderly individual suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia wanders off. Instead of treating them like a regular missing persons case, she hopes authorities look to the possibility of treating cases like her husband’s more like that of a missing child – mobilizing bigger search teams more quickly.

Auburn Police Chief Phil Crowell said his department entered Young’s information into a national database as soon as officers took the report, and organized volunteers to search the immediate area. A news release was issued Tuesday.

Early on, police were concentrating on Connecticut as a possible area where Bill Young might have traveled because he had family ties. Crowell said he asked the Maine Game Wardens to keep an eye out for Young’s Toyota RAV4 with military plates after learning that the agency would have its helicopter out on Saturday.

“I agree with Mrs. Young that we should want good to come from a tragedy,” Crowell said. “And if there’s a way we can improve, then we need to ask how we can improve on it.”

Crowell said that since Young’s disappearance, he’s been looking at future possibilities when it comes to locating missing persons suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia. One program of particular interest to Crowell involved individuals wearing a bracelet equipped with a GPS tracking device that would help locate them quickly if they wander off.

Joy Heptner, executive director of the Maine Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, said more and more communities are beginning to consider such programs. She is currently working with a group in the Bangor area that is considering options for how to best account for and help individuals suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia. She added that the first 24-hours are most critical in such cases.

“There’s always the first time,” Heptner said of family members assuming their loved ones won’t run off. “We just want to make sure those people are safe. It’s a horrible enough disease to have to lose a loved one, too.”