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/