had a scare yesterday with my mom. She has dementia and has wandered off before and thought it was happening again yesterday when my mom disappeared. My mom went outside which is normal because she loves working outside and getting her flowers ready. So I was in the house doing laundry and went outside and she was missing. I went back in house, searched all rooms, went back outside and looked everywhere even down our hill thinking maybe she fell down the hill. So then started driving around neighborhood and found nothing then came back and decided to check with neighbor in case she saw her. This is when I found my mom. She has wandered off many times and first time it happened she broke her hip. I'm thinking of getting a tracking system the county has that the police can track where she is and can find her within 30 minutes of her leaving.
What I do always have in my pocket is a key ring with a door key watch and whistle on it.
I have locked myself out of the house on numerous ocassions, watches don't like to be on my wrist and quickly fail and the whistle is to summon help as we have a big wooded yard.
Wandering is a very serious concern and falls can hapen at any age.
My city has an automatic phone messaging system to contact every resident. For example it was once used to report a problem what was going to make water unavailable starting at a certain time and lasting for a certain number of hours. I think I remember a storm message, also. Last fall there was a message reporting an elderly gentleman missing, describing where he had wandered off from and what he was wearing. I was very glad to get another message about an hour later saying he had been located and he was unharmed. Whew!
It is interesting to hear how communities deal with this growing problem.