Law could help keep track of Ind. elderly

Indiana’s children aren’t the only Hoosiers who go missing.

The Indiana State General Assembly is debating whether or not to implement Silver Alerts, said Bill Brumbach, a fiscal analyst of the Office of Fiscal and Management Analysis – Indiana Legislative Services Agency.

Silver Alerts, similar to Amber Alerts for children, would be issued to alert the public when an elderly person goes missing or is presumed to be in danger. The author of the bill is State Senator Vi Simpson, D-Ellettsville.

Brumbach said the program is still being debated because there is the fear that introducing a multitude of alerts will inundate the public. Brumbach said too many alerts could cause a loss of public attention toward helping to locate missing or endangered children or adults.

Brumbach said the program was taken into consideration after 91-year-old Clifford E. “Jack” Obenchain of Pittsboro went missing. On Dec. 3, 2007, while on his delivery route for an Avon company, Obenchain stopped twice in Indianapolis but never arrived at his scheduled third stop. Police believe Obenchain kept driving east on Interstate 70 and ended up in Dayton, Ohio. He was eventually found dead near his van about two weeks later in a Jay County creek.

Brumbach said it is hard to determine how many senior citizens disappear in Indiana.

“Family members don’t always report when one of their elder members go missing,” he said. “It is also indeterminable to decide who is at high risk of disappearing.”

Because the Amber Alert has proved to be very successful, Peg McLeish, deputy chief of staff and press secretary to Indiana Senate Democrats, said the Silver Alert will work in the same way the Amber Alert does.

Sophia Haase, director of social services at Golden Living Center, a local nursing home, said the issue of senior citizens going missing in Bloomington is not really relevant.

“We take major precautions at the nursing facility. We have guards all throughout the building. We also have an alarm that goes off if someone wanders out of the door,” she said.

Haase said she hasn’t heard about it happening a lot but agreed that family members do not always report when an older relative goes missing. Haase said cases of elderly people going missing most likely occurs more often when those people live in houses by themselves rather than in nursing homes. When senior citizens do go missing from their homes, Haase said Adult Protective Services tend to gets involved.

McLeish said the Silver Alert program has been promoted in other states as well and that the ultimate goal is to issue the program statewide.