New set of calls, Another Long Term Missing Person

We have been concentrating our calling efforts on the "greater LA" area, and so have called all of the residential care facilities in LA and Orange Counties.  We have also called most of them in Ventura, San Bernardino, and San Diego Counties.  We recently received some advice that the city of Bakersfield, in Kern County, has care facilities that tend to charge less than those in LA.  If someone is trying to place Nancy, they might try there to lower their costs.  So, we are going to call the Bakersfield care facilities (and double check San Bernardino and Riverside to make sure we have called them as well.  If you are interested in calling places, but are not yet registered with our Queen of All Phone Calls, Peggy, please send us an email at NancyIsMissing@Gmail.com and we'll get you set up.

The importance of this was brought home yesterday when I had a discussion with Detective Soto - the supervisor of the LAPD Missing Persons Dept.  He mentioned that the LA Coroner had called, and that they had one of the people listed as missing.  This person had actually been in a Residential Care Facility - under their real name!  Unfortunately, there is no system set up that has care facilities report who they have.  So I would once again like to thank the callers for the tremendous effort, and let's make sure we can find Nancy if she is indeed in such a facility.

One Year

It is with a heavy heart that we note the one year anniversary of Nancy's disappearance.
One year, and with the exception of our video collection showing her 3 blocks away from LACMA, we have not another single trace of her.  This despite an unprecedented level of search activities

Many heartfelt thanks to all of you who have helped in any way.  You inspire me.

Without any logical explanation of how we have yet to find her, I cannot cease the search efforts.  Nancy, quite simply, must be somewhere.  I have used the expression "we are running out of places to look", but in city of this size, that is clearly absurd.  Better stated is that "we have contacted or looked in all the places that seem reasonable for her to end up".  

We'll continue efforts, both top down and bottoms up, to find her.  My personal appeal is to spread Nancy's story as wide as possible through social media outlets.  If enough people share, hopefully someone who has interacted with Nancy will come forward and contact us.

LA County Video on Wandering featuring Nancy, Emails to facilities

LA County has made a video discussing the issues of wandering, and it starts with a feature on Nancy.  https://vimeo.com/238108296

The county will begin airing it on the County Channel and sharing via social media in the next week or so.

Sister Allison is also putting together an email to all of the facilities, both residential care and hospitals, for whom we have an email, asking them once again to check for Nancy and to share her story on social media.

Thin Air Podcast is up

This is really well done, and tells the story well.
It lasts 1 hour, 18 minutes.

https://soundcloud.com/thin-air-podcast/episode-31-nancy-paulikas

They have also started a blog ...

http://thinairpodcast.com/?episode=episode-31-nancy-paulikas

walk4ALZ

We have formed a team for the Alzheimer's Greater LA walk4ALZ on October 29.
Teaming with the makers of the short film Chocolate  - All Who Wander Are Not Lost" (D. Ellen Miller Productions, LLC).  Please join us!

Here is our team page Chocolate for Nancy Team Page

And here is my individual page Kirk's Page

Walk to End Alzheimer's; La Brea News; Think Air Podcast; KCET SoCal Connected updates

We had a nice walk today in Hermosa Beach for the Walk to End Alzheimer's.  Team Drasa had the second most contributions at $10, 670 (and counting).   Thanks to all of you who contributed and/or particpated! The organizers were kind enough to allow me to speak, and I asked people to share Nancy's story on social media. The full text is at the end of this post.  (here is the facebook page for today's walk: https://www.facebook.com/groups/beachcities/)

Alzheimer's Greater LA is also hosting a walk on October 29.  (This organization is distinct from the Alzheimer's Association.  AlzGLA concentrates on support in Los Angeles for sufferers of Alzheimer's and their care givers).  I believe we'll support this walk as well, and will post as soon as we have that worked out.  ALZGLA Walk Page

Ed Folven continues his coverage of our search - here is his latest article in the Park La Brea News:
http://beverlypress.com/2017/09/44782/

The Thin Air Podcast is scheduled to be release on October 9.  I'll post it here.

The KCET SoCal Connected segment featuring Nancy hasn't been scheduled yet ... I'll let you know as soon as I know when that's coming. 

Full text of my speech for the Beach Cities Walk to End Alzheimer's:



Good Morning, my name is Kirk Moody and I am a captain of Team Drasa.

Drasa is a Lithuanian word that means “Courage”, and we formed this team in 2015 after my wife, Nancy Paulikas was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Team Drasa first participated in the Walk to End Alzheimer’s in Huntington Beach, with a great many people supporting Nancy and helping to fund the search for a cure for Alzheimer’s – a truly cruel disease.

Last year, we once again formed Team Drasa with the intent of participating in the Long Beach Walk. Unfortunately, shortly before that time, Nancy went missing. Nancy and some of my family were visiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We were wrapping up for the day, and visited the restroom one last time. I believe that Nancy finished there before I did, and took off looking for us, under the impression that we had left. Other than some security video that captures her walking away from the museum that afternoon, we have not unearthed a single clue as to her whereabouts, now, almost one year later.

We have had a great outpouring of support and volunteer help. Along with law enforcement, we have searched for Nancy in every conceivable way. At this point, the single most helpful thing you personally can do to help find Nancy is to share her story on all of your social media platforms. Hopefully, someone who sees it on social media, and has interacted with Nancy, will contact us and we can bring her home.

The fact that Nancy has been missing this long is quite unusual, but the fact that she “wandered” is sadly quite common. It is estimated that 60% of Alzheimer’s patients will wander from their home or caregiver at some point. I encourage all of you here today who are acquainted with an Alzheimer’s patient to familiarize yourself with the Wandering page on the Alzheimer’s Association’s website. Learn what you can do to reduce the chances of wandering and what to do if it does occur.

Thank you for listening and for participating in this event, directly contributing to efforts to attack this horrible disease.

KTLA Segment on the film screening last night at LACMA

KTLA Segment

Can anyone find the segment on ABC News (Channel 7)?  I even received an email that someone saw it, but I can't find it on-line.
thanks

Good article in the Daily Breeze about the upcoming event at LACMA to bring renewed awareness to finding Nancy...

Please share widely via social media!

Click HERE to go to Daily Breeze Arcticle

"Theme" of LACMA Event is "Please Share On Social Media"

We are going to ask people to help by sharing, and asking their friends to share, the Nancy Is Missing story on social media.  Anyone can do that by checking out the FaceBook page NancyIsMissing, or through Instagram, Twitter, etc. with  #NancyIsMissing #LetsFindNancy.

Team Drasa To Participate in the Beach Cities Walk to End Alzheimer's

Please join us!

Team Drasa Page

Please Note That You Must Get a Ticket to Attend the LACMA Film Event September 23 (it is free)

http://www.lacma.org/event/chocolate-and-still-alice

Meeting with Hospital Association

The Hospital Association of Southern California (HASC) invited me to come speak to them about our experiences with hospitals in our search for Nancy (thanks to Gordana for setting this up!).

This is an advocacy group with quite a bit of influence over their member hospitals.

I met with a senior management team, including the COO Mark Gamble.  They were quite receptive to my presentation (I went through some of our frustrations in phoning and asking for Jane Does, HIPAA walls, and the lack of standards for handling Jane Does).  In fact, they immediately constructed some action items to address some of these issues.  The individual hospitals and their management will have the final say, of course, but I believe HASC will make a good attempt at creating a more uniform set of practices for helping to identify patients.

Thanks to HASC for listening!

Upcoming Media Events

This is just a quick post to consolidate three upcoming events that involve the media:

1. September 23, 4:00: LACMA Film event - please go to the site and get your complimentary tickets: http://www.lacma.org/programs/film
2. Late September / early October (we don't have a specific date yet): Thin Air Podcast about Nancy and our search for her.  http://thinairpodcast.com/
3. October 10: KCET (Los Angeles Public TV Station) will feature a segment on Nancy and our search: https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected

Activities: EMS Followup Calls; TV Ad; Postcard Response; Hospital DB Checks; ThinAir PodCast

EMS Follow-up Calls - Our great calling crew has been busy with various tasks - they are on the verge of finishing the calls to all the major western cities, and they are now tackling two different requests to hospitals: a) Calling about specific EMS transports to the hospitals that the LA County Fire Department flagged for our review, and b) asking the hospitals to perform the "enhanced Database search" looking for people that might be Nancy who have been through their system.  These are not particularly fun calls, often receiving resistance based on a misunderstanding of HIPAA laws, however, for every one of those calls that succeeds in getting the data, it reduces by at least one the number of hospitals that I have to personally visit (which is a very time consuming process, as you can imagine).  If you have some time (and a lot of fortitude) and would like to add yourself to the volunteer calling corps, please let us know.  (you can comment on this post, or email NancyIsMissing@gmail.com)

TV Ad - We made a 15 second TV Ad that will be shown in LA starting today - when it airs, it will be "bookended" - i.e., shown both at the beginning and end of a commercial break. Here is the ad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CImhO2169MY&feature=youtu.be 

Postcard Response - We mailed out almost 9,000 postcards to Residential Care Facilities and Hospice Care facilities a few weeks ago, and most of them seem to have been delivered.  I have received a few calls from people that are concerned and wanted to know that they got the card.  One nice couple in Riverside volunteered to take flyers to the various care facilities that she, as a nurse, visits.  The postcard featured the "age progressed" photo of Nancy.

Hospital Database Search - In addition to the calls mentioned above, I personally continue to visit hospitals asking them to do the enhanced search.  Some hospitals and personnel really go the extra mile to help out, and others, of course, do little.  In all of these searches, the number of people that could possibly be Nancy is very small (to non-existent).  The search is not perfect, but it sure seems like it should uncover someone that fits Nancy's description unless she was specifically admitted under the wrong name.

ThinAir Podcast - There is a true-crime podcast show called "ThinAir" that has interviewed me and will interview others that have been involved in the search for Nancy.  They plan to air their program either at the end of September or beginning of October, and I'll post that information when I receive it.  We are always interested in any avenue to spread the word about Nancy.

 

Tickets for LACMA Screening; BOLOH Task Force; EMS responses; Hospital Visits

If you would like to go to the screening of Chocolate, the Nancy video, and Still Alice at LACMA September 23, 4:00 PM, you can get tickets (they are free), and that might be a good idea to make sure you can get in ... I'm not sure whether or not you need to purchase a ticket to get into LACMA itself, but you might want to plan on it.  Here is the link again:
http://www.lacma.org/programs/film

Nancy's dad and I attended the latest Bringing Our Loved Ones Home Task Force meeting Thursday.  This was a pretty good meeting.  Working groups were formed and the participants, largely Government employees were engaged and certainly working towards the goal of improving processes for finding missing people and looking into using technological solutions (i.e., tracking devices) to help. 

A side benefit of this meeting is that I get to meet face-to-face with some of the county people I have spoken to on the phone (like the Public Guardian), and also some groups that I have been unable to engage.  So, for this visit, I spoke to representatives from the LA County  and LA City Fire Departments.  To date, I have been unsuccessful in getting emergency response data for people that might fit Nancy's profile.  Both gentlemen promised to look into it, and both have contacted me that they are doing so.  The LA County has sent me a spreadsheet with 30 or so possibilities that we can now chase down with the hospitals where these women were taken.

I am continuing to visit hospitals asking them to do more advanced database searches.  I can only put so many of these on the table at one time because they typically require several follow-up calls.  This week I had an unusually high success rate where 4 of the 5 hospitals readily agreed to take a look (however, sometimes this happens, and when they get a little into it, they find some obstacles ....).

And from the last visits, I have had several hospitals that have done the search and not found any matches.  This at least crosses these off the list for this type of effort.  Significantly, this includes all the county run hospitals. 

LACMA Screening - Official Announcement

Here is the official announcement from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) about the screening of Chocolate and Still Alice. 

September 23, 4:00 PM.

Please join us!

http://www.lacma.org/programs/film

Activities: Calling Cities; Hospital Visits; Database Searches; HASC; Manhattan Beach CERT; Updated "Efforts"

Our awesome callers continue to call large western US cities.  It is clear that the word gets around.  I got a tip call from a woman in El Paso TX, who has frequently seen a woman that looks like Nancy at her church, St. Patrick's.  However, it appears that this woman converses extensively with the priest at the church, so it probably isn't Nancy.  The good thing to note is that people are out there looking!

I visited more hospitals last Friday, this time with Sgt. Mike Goldberg of the LAPD who is volunteering his off time to help.  As noted before, it is remarkable how much more helpful hospitals are when it is the LAPD asking!  We went to 4 hospitals, asking them to do the "non-standard" query of their admissions database outlined a couple of weeks ago, and I believe all 4 will do it (three already have).  Sgt. Goldberg and I were accompanied by a film crew from KCET.  Again, from a previous post - The KCET "SoCal Connected" is going to do a segment on the search for Nancy, and they have been filming various aspects of the search.

With the help of HASC, we sent an email to all of the IT departments of hospitals and emergency responders - but the email was from the Manhattan Beach Police Department - hopefully getting a little more attention.  So far, the MBPD has received a couple of calls asking if this was a legitimate request, and one, count 'em one, call from the Ventura County EMS saying that they performed the search and did not find anyone matching Nancy's description (to be fair, we did not specifically ask them to reply once they had completed the search unless they had some candidates).

Speaking of HASC (Hospital Association of Southern California - an advocacy group), they have invited me to speak to their senior staff tomorrow.  I have a couple of sets of charts - one specific to Nancy, and the other some ideas on how they might try to standardize handling of John/Jane Does, clearly based on our experience in interacting with the hospitals.

I have also spoken and been invited to speak again to the Manhattan Beach Citizen Emergency Response Team.  This is a group that Nancy belonged to, and they are ready and willing to help with the search efforts.

There is an updated version of the Efforts to Find Nancy on the right hand side of the blog ... a few additions in the last couple of months.

About 9,000 Postcards going out to help find Nancy...

We ordered printing and addressing of 8,928 postcards yesterday.  These are going to all the residential care facilities in the 10 Southern California counties (at least, all of them that have an address the post office recognizes).

Here they are, but I'll try to put them over on the side too.

Beach Reporter Article

Link to Beach Reporter Article

What might Nancy look like now? Team releases a "age-processed" photo to help find Nancy

Kirk and his team have worked with an artist to create an image of what Nancy might look like at this point.

The press has responded, with an article from the Daily Breeze yesterday, Friday 14 July.

This image will be included in an upcoming mailing to approximately 10,000 residential care facilities in LA and surrounding counties.

PLEASE encourage others to keep looking for Nancy!

Link to Daily Breeze article