Great Ourpouring of Support, Thank You

Thanks to all of you who have been so kind as to relate your thoughts and wishes our way.

We are planning a memorial service but do not have any details yet.  We'll post specifics as they form.  Thank you all again.

Nancy's Remains Found

I heard from the police today that they have identified a skull and some ribs as positively matching Nancy's DNA.  Her remains were found in a remote area around Los Angeles.

Thank you all for you continued interest.

Christmas Memories

Amber on the right in the hat

Reindeer Antlers

Memories of Christmas from Nancy’s husband, Kirk

Nancy is an only child, and Christmas was typically celebrated, naturally, with her and her parents. When we started dating, as many couples do, we split our Christmas celebrations – every other year with each other’s’ families. My family is larger, and our tradition was to have lots of people together – mayhem often ensued (in a good way) – which may have come as a shock to Nancy’s system, but she adapted quickly. One year stands out in my memory. Nancy and I were flying into Denver on Christmas day. We got the earliest flight so that we could maintain the traditional Moody family schedule: Stockings, breakfast, then presents. It was also traditional to celebrate the stockings in one’s pajamas. My niece, Amber, who was about 13 at the time, went with her parents to meet us at the airport. She had a surprise for us! She was wearing a silly-looking Christmas Tree stocking cap. According to her mom Karen, just when people started coming off the plane, Amber started to get cold feet and asked her mom if maybe the hat would embarrass Uncle Kirk and (especially) Aunt Nancy. Karen assured her that we would take it all in good fun. Lo and behold, we exited the plane wearing pajamas and deer antlers. Nancy hopes we didn’t embarrass Amber too much!

Editors Note: During this holiday season, if you visit a skilled-nursing facility, please keep your eyes open for Nancy. Look at everyone there for a Caucasian female, late 50’s, ice-blue eyes, who cannot communicate. Please send all leads to Kirk at NancyIsMissing@gmail.com. You don’t have to be positive it is Nancy, she just needs to completely fit the profile. Including a photo is ideal if possible. Thanks. Let’s bring Nancy home.

Nice segment by Iliana Guevera on Spectrum 1

This is a new news outlet, and Iliana did a nice job ...

https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-east/health/2018/12/10/la-county-approved-an-initiative-to-help-those-with-alzehimer-s#

Cats and Coffee Maker By Diane Bassett, Nancy’s childhood friend

I've been friends with Nancy since we were both in 4th grade, as we were next door neighbors. We went through school together and like many friends went on different paths as we went off to different colleges (remember this was back in the day before email, cellphones and the internet!). She went to UC Davis, but our families stayed closely connected since my sister also went there. They would occasionally carpool back and forth from school and I remember one time our family still laughs about when it was a challenge to fit everything into the jam-packed small car they were sharing-- including a cat and a litterbox that was balanced precariously in the back!

After Nancy graduated she moved to the Bay Area where we connected again. She was getting her Masters in Computer Science from Stanford and living with other grad students in a shared house in Palo Alto. One of their most prized possessions (which was very high-tech for the time) was a coffee maker with a timer that ensured the java was ready for everyone upon waking! I remember a fun outing we had with her and her then-boyfriend, wine tasting in the Santa Cruz mountains. Nancy was always a wine aficionado. 

Nancy was always the smartest person in the room, and also one of the most humble, polite and considerate. She was tremendously gifted and never let it swell her ego. I hold great hope that she will be found and I ask us all to talk about her with any people who might have contact in any way with board-and-care facilities where she might now be a patient. Hair dressers, caregivers, janitorial staff -- any one of these people might be the one to recognize a patient who just might be Nancy. She is counting on us to keep her front-of-mind with people who might be key to finding her.

Editors Note: During this holiday season, if you visit a skilled-nursing facility, please keep your eyes open for Nancy. Look at everyone there for a Caucasian female, late 50’s, ice-blue eyes, who cannot communicate. Please send all leads to Kirk at NancyIsMissing@gmail.com. You don’t have to be positive it is Nancy, she just needs to completely fit the profile. Including a photo is ideal if possible. Thanks. Let’s bring Nancy home.

A Thanksgiving Story

Thanksgiving Memories with Nancy
from Allison Moody, Nancy’s Sister-in-Law

Kirk's family got a wild hair in 1994, and decided to surprise Kirk and Nancy by crashing their Thanksgiving dinner. They had invited Kirk's mom Kati, so we thought we were entitled to eat there as well. Kirk's siblings Karen, Allison, and Rex, niece Amber, nephew Ryan and sister in-law Susan, all flew to LAX with Kati. Kirk picked Kati up at the airport gate (remember when we could do that!?) while the rest of us "hid" on the airplane, and then shared two hotel rooms – boys and girls.
Wednesday, we went to Disneyland and got Mickey Mouse ears hats with our names stitched on the front. (Rex had "Grumpy") And on Thanksgiving, we arrived at their doorstep in our hats and good clothes. Nancy answered the door. She opened it, closed it, and from inside the house we could hear “Kirrrrrk! You'd better come here!” We thought that was priceless...the closed door especially! Of course, they had a full house already, including Nancy's parents George and Joan, Kirk's cousin Melissa Walsh and her family and a bunch of friends who played a lot of basketball in the driveway. Nancy made the mashed potatoes, yams and helped Kirk with all manner of other dishes.

On Friday, two more Colorado friends, Stru and Peg (THE Peg who is now the Care Facility Phone Call Manager in our efforts to find Nancy) joined us and we went to Universal Studios (we were all checking out our friend Stru's new honey). What a great time we all had on that trip!

Happy Thanksgiving. Let’s Bring Nancy Home!

 Kirk and Nancy preparing MORE food!

Newly minted Mousketeers Amber and Allison

A Few Memories ...

Memories from her father for Nancy’s birthday weekend.

Nancy learned to ski at around age four or five. Early in her skiing “career” one morning at Mammoth Mountain, she was skiing with Mom and Dad on Chair 1. Mom fell, Dad stayed to help Mom up. Meantime Nancy kept skiing and took a turn at a fork in the trail toward Chair 2 which had not yet been opened for the day . Mom and dad skied down to the base of Chair 1 at the Mammoth Lodge. “NO NANCY!!” It was about 9AM the temperature was 8F. The ski patrol refused to go looking for Nancy with the comment that they swept trails at the end of the day. PANIC! But looking up, a few minutes later, here comes Nancy, with a wide smile on her face, being guided down the trail by an adult skier. Nancy had indeed made it to the bottom of Chair 2 on her own which had just started running, whereupon a friendly adult and Nancy rode the chair up together and skied down together. Nancy thought this was a great adventure!

This kind of adventuresome spirit, manifested at an early age, was so typical of Nancy.

Our tradition is to walk from one South Bay pier to two others on milestone birthdays. We usually stopped at each one for a bite or a drink or both. When Nancy turned 50, we got a bonus with a Broncos game, which we watched at our traditional hangout Grunions. Good times!
 

Increasing Awareness - Local Task Force, Flyers in other languages, and more coverage of LA Found

Alzheimer's Los Angeles participates in the San Gabriel Valley Alzheimer's Task Force, which consists of professionals who deal with dementia patients such as employees of care facilities and social workers.  Kelly Honda of AlzLA set up an opportunity for me to share Nancy's story with this group last week, and that helps them understand real world issues in dealing with Alzheimer's sufferers, but also helps us spread Nancy's information to a larger network of key people.

It is also fortuitous because along with Kelly, Angie Yeh, Juyoung Park, and Yuan Yao were there.  Juyoung updated our Korean version of the flyer, and Yuan provided two Chinese versions.  Thanks so much to AlzLA for doing this!   I put these in a shareable folder that you can find on the right hand side of the blog.  And it is also right here:

Flyers in other languages

Also, other newspapers are picking up parts of the Rob Kuznia article and increasing the awareness of LA Found and Project Lifesaver.

I couldn't find an on-line version of this, but my sister sent me an image from today's Denver Post:

This is big: Washington Post Article by Rob Kuznia

This is an article by Rob Kuznia about LA Found - featuring our search for Nancy:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/some-people-with-dementia-wander-away-and-get-lost-a-bracelet-can-help-find-them/2018/11/02/58ee2ab6-d94b-11e8-83a2-d1c3da28d6b6_story.html?utm_term=.109fa04209e0

A Close Friend Remembers Halloween with Nancy

Remembering Halloween with Nancy.

 

I grew up across the street from Nancy. I want to share my memories of Halloween with her.

 

It was always dark. Neighborhood kids were everywhere. Parents waited in the street while kids went up to the doors of houses. It was such a fun night being out together in the dark and pretending to be someone or something else. One popular house let the parents sit and they served lemonade and cookies. There was one house on our street where every year, the woman dressed up as a witch. She was so scary! She really looked and acted like a witch. We would be brave and go up to her door as a group. She’d slowly open the door and cackle. Then she’d speak to us in a creepy, witch voice. We had a fun time being brave. Of course, throughout the rest of the year, the house was known as “the witch’s house”.

 

I remember one year, Nancy’s mom was making her a special costume. She was going to be a medieval princess. I remember because at the time, I had no idea what a medieval princess was. She had a cone hat with a beautiful scarf coming down.

 

Another year my brother, Jim, and I coordinated outfits with Nancy. We were dressed as the Munsters - Lily, Herman and Grandpa. Nancy, being younger and shorter, was an adorable Grandpa. This was a rare time that we bought our costumes. Part of the costume went over our clothes and then we had a plastic mask held in place by a rubber band in back of our head. You’ve all seen these types of costumes, but they were novel at the time. It may even have been the first year such costumes were available. We thought we were so cute. Of course, we had fun fooling adults into thinking we really were the Munsters.

 

Happy Halloween. Let’s bring Nancy home.

Edie Rogers Babbe

 

 

Chocolate - Not All Who Wander Are Lost is Now Available for All

Thiago Dadalt's award winning short film Chocolate - Not All Who Wander Are Lost is now up on GooglePlay, iTunes, and Amazon - here is the iTunes link:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/chocolate/id1437039461?ls=1

More Local Coverage

Some folks have said that they saw Nancy on a news cast, but I can't find it on line.  In the mean time, Jeanne Fratello has a story for a local on-line newsletter - DIG MB

http://www.digmb.com/2018/10/15/182109/nancy-paulikas-reward-raised-to-100-000

Press Conference

We held a press conference today and a couple of TV stations and a few print reporters came (that doesn't mean we actually get on TV) ...  Detective Rosenberger from the Manhattan Police Department, Nancy's parents Joan and George, and Nancy's great friend Nancy Ward were also there for support and interviews.

Megan Barnes has already published her article:
https://www.dailybreeze.com/2018/10/15/two-years-after-disappearance-reward-increased-to-100000-for-return-of-manhattan-beach-woman-nancy-paulikas/

And Jason Kandel from NBC also posted:
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Nancy-Paulikas-missing-woman-manhattan-beach-two-years-help-497641091.html

Finally, this is what I said at the press conference.

One of the most common things people say to me is "I can't imagine what you and Nancy's parents are going through."  It is something that I would have said to a friend in similar circumstances but, having lived every minute of the last two years, I can say that the uncertainty and the void created by Nancy's disappearance is beyond anything that mere words can describe.  Nancy's father George has captured a bit of what we experience when he says "Every morning I get up thinking that today--this day--is going to be the day that we find Nancy.  And then the day passes and my hopes sink, but we are not giving up”.  We love Nancy dearly and we just want her back.

I also get asked, “Do you still have any hope?” and my answer to that is that we must still have hope because we continue to look for her.  Nancy’s mother says “The not knowing what has happened to my daughter, where she is, who is caring for her is a weight that is almost unbearable some days”.  Despite tremendous effort, we haven’t received any fruitful clues as to Nancy’s whereabouts.  We are hoping that by increasing the reward to $100,000, we may spur people to be even more vigilant or we might get the attention of someone who has encountered Nancy.

The police are continuing to work this case and are finishing up a collaborative task with Medi-Cal of checking into applications that were submitted for people matching Nancy’s general demographic.  The police and the coroner believe that Nancy is still alive.  They feel it is unlikely that her remains would not have been discovered and identified with the DNA and dental records we have provided.  If, however, the unthinkable has happened, we would like to make it clear that the reward applies even if someone knows the location of her remains.

Our team continues to call and care facilities – all of which have been contacted before.  It is surprising how short the corporate memory often is – places that we contacted just months ago do not remember hearing about Nancy.

We continue to receive good media coverage, and we thank you all for that.  In addition, Thiago Dadalt is working on a documentary called “Where is Nancy?”  He is in the production stage and is looking for some funding to finish the film.  If you would like to support his efforts, there is a crowd funding initiative you can see by searching on “Where is Nancy?”

We would also like to encourage everyone in LA County who knows someone with dementia to check out LA Found.  This is an initiative inspired by Nancy’s situation that Supervisor Janice Hahn has championed to provide tracking bracelets and the infrastructure needed for them to be effective.  There are other activities as well intended to both reduce the incidence of wandering and help find those if they do wander.  If these practices had existed two years ago, we might not need to be here today.  We hope that these efforts can prevent any other family having to go through what we have experienced.

For those asking what they can do to help, we continue to ask that, even if you haven’t encountered Nancy, please continue to share her story on social media.  If you see something that might relate to Nancy, say something.  Your efforts might reach the one person who can help unlock this nightmarish mystery.

Increased Reward

Monday, October 15 marks two years that we have been searching for Nancy, without a glimmer of success.

In order to keep the story alive and possibly reach someone who has encountered Nancy, we are increasing the reward amount to $100,000.  We will have a press conference to announce that and hopefully get some coverage.  Here is the press release we sent out this morning:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Kirk Moody (husband of missing Alzheimer’s sufferer)

310-650-7965 – Available for interviews by phone or in person

MANHATTAN BEACH, CA (October 12, 2016)

Press conference Monday, October 15, 2018 at 1:00 PM, at the home of Kirk Moody and Nancy Paulikas.  2209 Manzanita Ln, Manhattan Beach, 90266

The family of missing Alzheimer’s Patient, Nancy Paulikas, marks two year anniversary of the day she went missing.  Family appeals to the public to come forward with any information regarding the whereabouts of Nancy Paulikas or her remains if she is deceased.  The reward has been increased to $100,000, and is available for any information that allows the family to locate Nancy.  The family appreciates all who share Nancy’s information on social media to help increase awareness and improve the chances of locating her.

Extensive search efforts involving the Manhattan Beach Police Department, Los Angeles Police Department, CA Dept. of Justice, Medi-Cal, the Los Angeles County Government, and an army of family, friends, and volunteers have provided no clues as to Nancy’s whereabouts.

Manhattan Beach Police Detective Michael Rosenberger will also be available for interviews.

Nancy was the inspiration behind the recently announced LA County initiative LA Found, championed by Supervisor Janice Hahn.

Nancy is also the subject of a segment in KCET’s SoCal Connected, a Thin Air Podcast, and an upcoming documentary produced by D. Ellen Miller Productions and directed by Thiago Dadalt (View Trailer).

Nancy is Caucasian, 5’7” and was 140 lbs at the time of disappearance. Her most distinctive feature is her ice blue eyes, and her family hopes people will recognize her by those eyes. Her hair is light brown with gray; she has no tattoos or distinguishing marks. She developed early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and has been losing cognitive functioning for three or more years. She has lost a great deal of verbal abilities and it is believed that she has been unable to identify herself.

In a moment of hustle and bustle at the bathrooms at LACMA, Nancy walked away from a family outing on October 15, 2016. Other than a few security camera views of her walking away from LACMA on that afternoon, she has not been seen since.

The possibility of Nancy being deceased is an ongoing fear of the family, but police and coroners have yet to believe this is the case, as no bodies with her DNA or fingerprints have been located in Los Angeles and counties beyond.

A website is continually updated at www.NancyIsMissing.blogspot.com.  Nancy’s husband, Kirk Moody is available for interviews by phone or in person at 310-650-7965.

###

Great Success at the Beach Cities Walk to End Alzheimer's!

Great success at the Beach Cities Walk to End Alzheimer's! Team Drasa exceeded their goal and collected over $10,000! Thanks to all donors and participants.
The overall walk also exceeded their goal and over $190,000.


If you missed that opportunity, Team Drasa is also supporting the ALZGLA Walk4ALZ:

Walk4ALZ Team Drasa 

Thiago Dadalt is Crowd Sourching (Funding) a Documentary about Nancy

Thiago - the writer/director of the amazing short film "Chocolate - All Who Wander are Not Lost" - is working on a documentary about Nancy, our search for her, and at-risk people wandering.  Check out his trailer and request for Crowd Source Funds:

Where Is Nancy?

Tracking Devices Outside of Los Angeles

LA Found can provide citizens of Los Angeles with bracelets that can then be tracked if an at risk person goes missing.  There are other technologies available which might be useful information for people outside of LA.  One worth mentioning is Great Call which has (for example) a pendant that can be worn by the at-risk person and the caregiver can see where they are on their mobile device.

https://www.greatcall.com/services-apps

Article in Beach Reporter about upcoming Beach Cities Walk to End Alzheimer's - updates the search for Nancy

http://tbrnews.com/news/manhattan_beach/walk-to-end-alzheimer-s-expects-people-sept/article_e548c3d8-bb9e-11e8-89fa-cf5f6553af21.html

Lots of Media Coverage for LA Found

Megan Barnes and Ed Folven have been awesome in continuing to cover our search for Nancy:

Megan Barnes Article

Ed Folven Article (Park La Brea New)

Also:

Nina Agrawal, Los Angeles Times (Picked up nationally)

ABC

KTLA

NBC

Kick off of LA Found

LA County Supervisory Janice Hahn held a press conference today to announce the kick off of LA Found https://lafound.com/  This is the formal rollout of the efforts of the Bringing Our Loved Ones Home Task force that she initiated.

There is quite a bit of press coverage ... here are two examples:

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-la-found-bracelet-20180905-story.html#

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/article/la-county-launches-tracking-bracelet-program-to-find-missing-patients/vi-BBMVdjH

New Ariticle from KCET

https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected/la-county-tests-tracking-device-that-helps-locate-alzheimers-patients

Update on Medi-Cal Applications List; LAPD Dispatch Call review

Detective Rosenberger has been visiting the locations that Medi-Cal provided - those places that applied for benefits for someone that fits Nancy's demographic.  He was able to split 8 places off for me to visit because they are care facilities, so it is nothing new for our team to visit.  Most of the applications are in private residences and someone there applied for benefits.  Clearly, no sign of Nancy yet, but working through the list takes some time, and he hasn't finished yet.

Also, LAPD did a review of calls that they received for "Insane Woman" and "Trespassing Woman", following up on those to look at the actual incident report.  Of all the calls, one stood out as sounding something like Nancy, and Detective Rosenberger followed up and even went to the hospital that admitted her.  On the fuller description, it is clearly not Nancy. 

The awesome callers continue to re-call facilities that we have not contacted in over a year, and it is remarkable how few of them have any knowledge of Nancy (speaks to both large turnover in these care facilities, and just a normal lack of institutional memory).

Please don't forget the upcoming Alzheimer's walks and join or donate to Team Drasa!

US News and World Report Article About the Task Force; Report on Checking Medi-Cal Applications

Katelyn Newman wrote a very nice piece in US News and World Report about the Bringing Our Loved Ones Home Task Force and rolling out Project Lifesaver.

https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2018-07-19/los-angeles-county-launches-bracelet-tracking-program-for-alzheimers-autism-wanderers

The article starts with the search for Nancy, and then goes into a little more detail about the Task Force and Project Lifesaver, which is becoming active now.

The MBPD has started visiting addresses that applied for Medi-Cal benefits for people that fit Nancy's general demographic.  They are not at liberty to share the whole list with us, but if they determine that an address is a commercial residential facility, they will share that.  So, after visiting around 7 locations themselves (with no trace of Nancy), they gave me 7 addresses as well, and I visited those facilities yesterday.  The results are strikingly similar  to our "cold calls" at facilities, and mentioning that Medi-Cal reports that this facility applied for benefits for  someone like Nancy did not seem to make much of an impact (this was my experience, not sure how that information was taken when the police were there).

So, we will continue to go through this list and hopefully find Nancy at one of the addresses.

Medi-Cal Has Provided Police a List of Applications

The Medi-Cal Investigations and Fraud Department has come through for us and provided a list of addresses of places that have applied for Medi-Cal benefits for someone that roughly fits Nancy's demographic.  They can only provide the information to Law Enforcement, and Detective Rosenberger of the Manhattan Beach PD is already taking action to check these places out.

This is a tremendous development that we have been waiting for some time.  If Nancy is indeed in a care facility of any size, the facility is going to want reimbursement, and this is going to come from Medi-Cal, so one of these applications should be about her.  Our fingers are crossed that this finally leads us to Nancy!

Still Waiting For Results, Calling Facilities

We are collectively waiting for results from the great support we are getting from law enforcement: 

• LAPD Missing Person lead detective Soto is going back through the call logs for the time immediately following Nancy's disappearance
• MBPD detective Rosenberger is checking with Culver City PD to do the same.  (We also have to do Beverly Hills and Inglewood)
• Det. Rosenberger is also waiting to hear back from Medi-Cal re our request for an expanded query (she was looking into it)

In the meantime, we are calling facilities that we called towards the beginning of our search.  At that time, we were mostly looking for a "Jane Doe", and did not have our calling process as refined, so it seems worthwhile to check back in with them.  If you would like to help, even if it is only calling one or two facilities per week, please email us at NancyIsMissing@gmail.com and we will set you up.

Medi-Cal Is Trying to Help; MBPD and LAPD reviewing police call logs

The CA Medi-Cal office is engaged with Det. Rosenberger of the Manhattan Police Department to determine if they can expand the query they have performed searching for applications for coverage.  This is great news, and our fingers are crossed that a new query reveals some actionable results.

Also, Det. Rosenberger is meeting with LAPD this week to review some of the call logs from around the time Nancy went missing to see if there were some calls that they may have missed reviewing earlier.

We finished our latest round of calls and visits (to places that either we have not contacted for a year, or places that I originally filtered out as "too expensive" to qualify).  I'm considering what to do next along these lines, somewhat hesitant to continue to burden our awesome calling crew.

Response from Medi-Cal office, Police and EMS log review, Upcoming podcast

Detective Rosenberger of the Manhattan Beach Police Department received a letter from the lead investigator for Medi-Cal in response to our queries.  They did run a query similar to what we had asked for, found 10 potential applications, checked them all out, but none were Nancy.  We are going to ask them to open the gates of their filter query a little wider to see if we can find other canidates.

Detective Rosenberger is also going to go to LAPD and other nearby city police and EMS departmetns and review the call and response logs for the day Nancy went missing and the period immnediately after that.

Also, Jason Kandel of NBC has created a new podcast, and I will post that as soon as it is on the air.  Thanks Jason!

Productive Meeting with Molly Davies and Dr. Wasserman

Molly Davies, Vice President of WISE and Healthy Aging, was kind enough to facilitate a meeting between us and Dr. Michael Wasserman, CEO of Rockport Healthcare Services - a non-profit dedicated to improving the well being of care facility residents.

Dr. Wasserman is well connected to many others in this industry, and is taking steps to spread the word about Nancy to a much larger audience.  He is also interested in the overall problem of Jane Does or other missing people ending up in Nursing Homes and Residential Care Facilities, and is going to look at the various processes that are in place (or not) to see if there are ways of greatly  improving the coordination between administrators of facilities and missing persons agencies.

Thanks so much to Ms. Davies for setting this up!

Janson Kandel of NBC Wrote a Nice Aritcle

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/Theory-Mulled-as-to-Possible-Whereabouts-of-Missing-Woman-With-Dementia-479927103.html

KCBS Story

KCBS is runnign a story about Nancy, including an interview with Sgt. Goldberg:

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/04/16/husband-wife-alzheimers-missing-lacma/

Tremendous Response to the Steve Lopez Article

We have been receiving great response to Steve Lopez's article in the LA Times.

Many people have emailed volunteering to help - including several detectives/investigators, both active and retired.  They have provided us with several ideas on other organizations to contact that might help disseminate Nancy's information more widely.

Of particular note is a former fraud investigator who states that the theory that Nancy is being kept in a care facility, possibly for fraudulent purposes, is right on the money.  He related several anecdotes of abusive practices and shady operations.  There is a set of investigative articles on this in the Sacramento Bee: http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/article2573412.html

From this situation, and with the help of Molly Davies - the Vice President for Elder Abuse Prevention and Ombudsman Services at WISE and Healthy Aging, we were able to get a large holding firm of care facilities to send Nancy's flyer to all of their administrators - possibly much more efficient then our group calling/visiting that many facilities.

There were also several "tips" of people that might be Nancy, but so far, of course, none of those have panned out.

Steve Lopez Article

Great article by Steve Lopez published both in the LA Times and MSNBC  - thanks to Steve for sticking with this story!
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/she-vanished-17-months-ago-with-no-leads-now-a-volunteer-cop-has-a-troubling-theory-about-what-happened-to-her/ar-AAvANZN

MBPD Sent Letters to over 800 RCFEs in LA; KNX Radio News Spot

Detective Rosenberger took the initiative to send out letters on Manhattan Beach Police Department letterhead, along with flyers, to 858 Residential Care Facilities in LA County (that's about all of the ones that have more than 6 residents!

Thanks to the police - and let's see if this garners more response than our previous mailings!

Also, KNX Radio (LA radio station) called me last week for a quick interview, and they apparently ran the story off of that many times over the next few days.  Keeping the story alive in the media should be helpful.

PSA from ALZGLA about Alzheimer's Patients Getting Lost

Alzheimer's Greater Los Angeles has made a Public Service Announcement video about Alzheimer's patients getting lost ... here it is:

https://youtu.be/ok0iJCS1rn4

Park La Brea News also covering this

Thanks to Ed Folven who continues to cover Nancy's story.

http://beverlypress.com/2018/02/bracelets-may-help-find-missing-people/

A Few Stories from Visits to Care Facilities and Elsewhere

We have been calling (in some cases, calling yet again) the Skilled Nursing Facilities throughout Southern CA, and have also been visiting the small Residential Care Facilities for the Elderly (RCFEs) - these being small ones (6 or fewer residents) in the area surrounding the museum (where Nancy was last seen).  And over the past few weeks, there are a few stories that I found of interest.

To start on a disappointing note - I am truly surprised by how few of the facilities (less than 10 percent) have an attendant that is familiar with Nancy's case.  We snail-mailed to all of these places twice - once with a letter and once with the postcard featuring an "aged" depiction of Nancy.  But it is now clear that we addressed them to the "Administrator" - the person listed in the CA database, and sent it to the address of the actual facility.  The problem with this is that the administrator is probably the owner of the house (these places are just houses with rooms set up to accommodate residents).  They may or may not visit the facilities on any regular basis, and the mail will be picked up by whoever.  The attendants are hired caregivers.  Clearly, the people we need to see the flyer for Nancy are the caregivers, not the owners/administrators.  That being said, some attendants have reported seeing either our TV ad, a Facebook post, or - the most common - "yeah, I've seen that somewhere ..."

On a happier note, a good friend happens to be friends with the manager of a fairly large chain of RCFEs here in SoCal, and the manager invited me to address all of her facility managers at a meeting today.  This was a great opportunity to ask these people to not only check their own facilities, but also to share the NancyIsMissing FaceBook page (or share on social media in other ways).  This was AWESOME!

In our visits, we happened across a larger facility that we had visited before, but went back in.  This too was a happy story because the Charge Nurse told us that her grandmother had similarly wandered, and been lost for 2 years(!).  They finally found her because she required medical attention and was taken to an Emergency Room at a hospital where they recognized her. All of our pushing of the flyers to ERs was not in vain - and in fact, we may have to look at doing it again.

I also had the opportunity to speak to the lead investigator for lost and missing persons at the CA Dept. of Justice.  She has known about Nancy's case since January of last year, and she also reports that a likely scenario is that Nancy is in an RCFE - a common place for missing at-risk people to show up.

So, it appears our efforts are not going to waste, and we'll keep at it!