Senior Woman Found Safe After Helicopter Search

A missing senior was located safely by a creek bed near her home on Cherry Tree Lane Wednesday, after a five-hour ground and helicopter search aided by a team of volunteers hailing from four separate agencies.  

After helping the woman into a shower, a caretaker returned to find the shower empty and the woman missing at 1:15pm Wednesday, according to  Chief Bret Sackett. 

The woman, who is in her early 70s, suffers from dementia and requires regular supervision and care. Her two sons and daughter began a preliminary search and reported her missing to the Sonoma County Sheriff's office at 2:30pm. 

They responded by employing “City Watch," a computer-aided dispatch system which alerted families living within a one-mile radius by phone of the woman's disappearance, and calling in the Sheriffs Helicopter, Henry 1, which circled over the city for half-an-hour. 

Following up on tips from the phone line, over a dozen public safety officials and volunteers—hailing from Sonoma Police Department, Schell-Vista Fire Department, Sonoma Valley Fire Rescue Authority, City of Sonoma Public Works Department, and the California Highway Patrol—set up camp in the Schell-Vista Volunteer Fire Department Station on Eighth Street East and several key locations within several miles of the woman’s home.

“Older people, when they have dementia, it’s really difficult to know where they’re going to go or what they’re going to do. So you try to find signals from their past and eliminate them from your search pattern, because it is common for them to go back,” said Sackett.

Alerted by the automated phone message, several citizens joined in the search.

At 7:45pm, members of the Sheriff Department’s Search and Rescue team located the woman by a creek bed near her home, lying in some blackberry brambles.

The area was covered by brush, and not visible from the air.

The female was weak, but responsive, said Sackett. “The assumption was she had just wandered down by the creek, maybe even picking blackberries or something, and either fell or tripped,” he said.

She was transported to the , where she was treated and reunited with her family. She remains in care, with non life-threatening injuries. 

"It was a wonderful effort by many people," said Sackett.