AUBURN — Backers of an alert system to help police and families find lost elders will push for legislation this winter.

Legislators, local police and advocates for Alzheimer’s patients met Thursday at the Auburn police station to discuss creating a Silver Alert system for Maine. Modeled after the Amber Alert system that helps locate abducted children, a Silver Alert would help find disoriented elders who have wandered away from home.

“This problem occurs way more than people think,” said Kathryn Pears, programs and public policy director for the Alzheimer’s Association. Pears is helping to draft a bill to establish a statewide alert system. She hopes it will go before legislators in January.

Auburn police Chief Phil Crowell began investigating programs to help find missing elders last April after 77-year-old William Young wandered off, disappeared into the Maine woods and died.

Young was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2004. It left him occasionally confused, anxious in crowds and with a poor sense of direction.

In April, he took the family’s Toyota RAV4 and drove away from his Auburn home. A national alert was put out, and Maine police and volunteers searched for him. His vehicle was discovered five days later in Spencer Bay about midway up the east shore of Moosehead Lake in Piscataquis County. His body was found a day later about 5 miles from his car.

The Silver Alert database program has been adopted in Florida, North Carolina and Texas, among other states. Police distribute kits to family members, places where they can put recent photographs, vital information, medical records and information about family cars and trucks.

Crowell said the number of Silver Alerts far surpasses the number of Amber Alerts. In Florida, the state issued 107 Silver Alerts in August. The state has issued 144 Amber Alerts in the past 10 years.

That’s been one drawback for legislators, Pears said.

“People are worried that it would be used enough that it would dilute the effectiveness of the Amber Alert system,” she said. 

Maine has not issued an Amber Alert since 2002 when the program began, Crowell said.

 
He had representatives from a GPS tracking company on hand to demonstrate their product. Peter Bitzas of Birds Eye Global Tracking sells a service that lets families track their relatives via the Internet. A GPS tracker sends text-message or e-mail alerts to caregivers when a person carrying the device wanders away from home.

Crowell said he would like to have several of the devices on hand to give to families of people recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

“Until they have some systems of their own in place, this would help,” he said.

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