Glendale PD promoting tracking wristband

Glendale PD, working with Supervisor Janice Hahn, is promoting a tracking wristband for Alzheimer's patients, prompted by Nancy's disappearance.

http://abc7.com/technology/bracelet-may-help-track-people-with-alzheimers-who-go-missing/2132980/

Activities: LACMA Chocolate Showing; HASC; Aging Photo, Calls, Visits, Media, Task Force

Several things were accomplished this last week:

1. LACMA has agreed to show the short film Chocolate (along with the video segment about Nancy and the feature film "Still Alice"); and they are going to name the event in honor of Nancy - very kind.  The event is slated for September 23 at 4:00.  Please attend!
2. Gordana Vukotich is a neighbor who has recently volunteered, and she has very useful expertise at the executive level in the health care field.  Along with indispensable help from Kathy Shoemaker, we were able to get Nancy's story to the current COO of the Hospital Association of Southern California (HASC).  Most hospitals here belong to that organization, and along with some specific requests for doing patient database searches for Jane Does that might have been Nancy, we were able to make a few suggestions on how they could make a few, hopefully simple, changes to their operating procedures to make this an easier process for people in the future.
3. We have asked a "Photo Aging" service to take a cut at what Nancy might look like now, assuming she spent at least some time out on the street.  If the results look promising, we'll release this to the media; and probably send out another postcard with Nancy's info on it to all of the residential facilities.
4. The awesome callers have finished calling every residential facility I could find, and have moved on to calling "Cities" (that is, cities outside of California).  This is a rather daunting task given that every city/county has a different way of dealing with missing persons, and especially of hearing about them from other places.
5. Our "Visiting teams" are finishing up going to those facilities that "didn't really give the right answer" on the phone.
6. We are still trying to get the national media interested in some aspect of this story.  Locally, Karen Foshay is the producer of "SoCal Connected" - a PBS show.  She would like her pilot show to feature a segment on our search for Nancy.  That should air October 10, and she will be accompanying us on some of our visits and watching us "work" with a camera rolling to build up some material.
7. A few of us are going to attend the "Bringing Our Loved Ones Home" Task Force meeting tomorrow.  This is the study group formed by our County Supervisor, Janice Hahn, to look into the use of tracking technology to help find wanderers.

Latest Acitivities

Several things are going on ...

1. The awesome callers have almost finished up the last list of residential care facilities - THANKS CALLERS AND PEG! ... about 15% of the facilities get the "Need to visit" tag based on either a specific recommendation from the caller or my determination that the facility doesn't understand or is uncooperative, so our visiting teams will start seeing some of those shortly.
2. A kind public relations woman has volunteered to join the effort (along with NJ Jaeger, who has been great at helping out) - Patti Londre, welcome!  We are looking at having another "media event" at LACMA, hopefully in July.  There are a couple of ideas for this event, one of which is to have a screening of the movie Chocolate.  I have been in contact with LACMA (Thanks Amy and Paul!) and they are looking it over.
3. We are beating our collective heads against the wall trying to come up with a way to help hospitals query their databases for Nancy - either as a past patient or current one.  Asking them to check the database without using "Name" usually results in a blank look.  Even those that are very willing to help are somewhat stumped by this problem.  And to complicate matters even more, different hospitals use different database systems.  So, we will continue to work this.

Latest Activities: Calls; Story ideas to National Media; Visits; Help from Specialists

Once again I am sorry that I have been remiss in updating the blog often, but here we are:

1. Calls - the callers are finishing up with a large list of Residential Facilities in the greater LA area.  Once they have completed all their calls, there are typically between 10% and 20% that seem to require a visit, and we will get some teams together to get that done.
2. Once we have finished those calls, we will turn our attention to calling cities outside of LA (cops, Public Guardians, Adult Protective Services and whoever those people recommend we call).  Thank you callers!!!  (some callers have had to suspend calling while they deal with their very real lives, and we have a few new volunteers.  As always, if you would like to get involved with this, please email NancyIsMissing@gmail.com and the Omnipotent Calling Queen will get you going).
3. We continue to work up Story Ideas for National Media outlets.  We started with mailing one page ideas to ABC News shows (their prescribed format), and we have added NPR and are trying to figure out how to become a trusted contributor to NBC.  There are a few other outlets that we still have to research and submit to.  (we do have a few volunteers working on this, thanks to them!)
4. LAPD Sgt. Goldberg took me to some hospitals today, and there was a marked difference in how they responded (a positive for today, but a bit sad in general).  He was excellent and patient in explaining why a simple database search (based on name or DoB alone) was not gong to work, and they all promised to try to get the right personnel working on this.  (Big thanks to Sgt. Goldberg!)
5. A couple of folks with special talents have recently volunteered their services and I am taking them up on it.  Jeff is in the clergy and is involved in the homeless food distribution system.  He has offered to go to hospitals and speak to the chaplains.  A remarkably good ideas since they tend to see just about every patient.  Thank you Jeff!
6. Also, Joel Oiknine (Pronounced Wokneen, of course) is a criminal defense lawyer with experience dealing with the county government.  Joel has very graciously volunteered to help in many many ways, including finding a way to get Department 95A to look for Nancy (Department 95A is the criminal court department for people with mental health issues) and  reaching out to his large network of friends in areas such as movie production and national news.  Welcome and thanks Joel!