The holidays were not the same for the Burr family.
Mililani resident William “Bill” Burr has been missing for two months and his family is still searching for him. Before his disappearance, the 79-year-old Vietnam veteran was diagnosed with dementia.
Joseph Burr, Bill's younger brother, flew from Ohio to Hawaii to help with the search. For five days he tried to follow his brother's footsteps to the most visited areas in central Oahu. He said the family received a lot of support from the community, which helped spread the news on social media.
They weren't lucky, but the family didn't give up.
“It was very stressful,” Joseph Burr said.
William Burr has been missing since October 2nd.
This missing person case is not an isolated incident. Honolulu CrimeStoppers reported that 73-year-old Juan Rodriguez of Ewa Beach has been missing since November and 85-year-old Francisco Pangelinan of Kapolei has been missing since May. Both have dementia.
As Hawaii's population ages, keeping track of loved ones is a challenge for a growing number of local families.
Health advocates are pushing a bill that would implement the Silver Alert program in the upcoming legislative session. Similar to the AMBER alert system used to locate abducted children, the program would do the same for older adults with cognitive impairments or dementia.
According to the Alzheimer's Association, 29,000 people age 65 or older in Hawaii were living with Alzheimer's disease in 2020. This number is expected to increase by 20% or 35,000 in the future.
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According to the Alzheimer's Association, nearly 7% of people ages 45 and older experience subjective cognitive decline or dementia.
Alzheimer's and dementia are responsible for memory loss, but dementia causes people to wander. According to Ron Shimabuku, director of public policy and advocacy for the Hawaiʻi Alzheimer's Association, at least 60% of people with dementia wander.
He said the Silver Alert program would help expedite the search for wandering seniors.
“It’s just a quick way to reach out to the masses and the public and help in the recovery of missing seniors,” he said.
Hawaii is one of several states that does not have a Silver Alert program.
Other states have a legal obligation to implement the program. Shimabuku said the programs have evolved over the years, noting that some states have expanded the alert system to include developmental disorders such as autism and epilepsy.
“Unfortunately, the Silver Alert Program is not a federal mandate and is not federally funded,” Shimabuku said. “So states across the country have set different criteria and who manages and coordinates the program, which can vary from state to state.”
A measure to create an alert program for missing seniors with dementia was last introduced in 2020 but failed early on.
Figures from the state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism project that Hawaii's aging population will continue to grow.
The bill received strong support from the state's Executive Office on Aging (EOA). The Attorney General's Department and the Honolulu Police Department opposed the measure at the time.
The AG's office had testified against the alert program, citing statistics on missing seniors from 2019 and pointing out that county police departments “believe they have sufficient resources.” They also said local broadcast media has been working with law enforcement to publicize missing seniors.
In an email, HPD spokeswoman Michelle Yu said the recovery rate for cases where Kūpuna was diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's disease is 99%. She added that some people had wandered away from home more than once.
“The Missing Persons Division consists of two investigators,” Yu said in an email. “The department is able to request assistance from criminal investigations, special services, patrol districts and other units as needed. HPD routinely notifies government and business partners such as law enforcement, OTS and the Honolulu Airport when a person goes missing. Searches for missing persons are also published through Crime Stoppers, media outlets and social media.”
However, Joseph Burr said it's still disappointing that Hawaii doesn't have a Silver Alert program like his home state of Ohio.
“(In Ohio) they use broadcast media, they use television news, they use newspapers and they use the Internet,” Burr said. “Local police post alerts about missing seniors through various media such as Facebook and Instagram, so there is a lot of information when a senior goes missing.”
He added that Ohio even has electronic signs over the interstate system that list the missing senior's license plate number, vehicle color and last known location with a time stamp.
Burr said he questions HPD's 99 percent recovery rate of missing seniors.
“When I was on the island in early October helping to search for my brother, I came across numerous posters of missing seniors suffering from dementia or dementia-related problems,” he said. “And I didn’t see anything that indicated recovery for these people.”
The cost of care
This is the first time Bill Burr has left home. However, according to Caroline Cadirao, the director of the EOA, there are incidents where seniors with dementia go missing more than once.
Cadirao said cases of missing kūpuna with dementia typically occur in the person's own home rather than in a nursing home with staff and procedures.
Some nursing homes can be expensive, but for others the price is negotiable.
John McDermott, the state's long-term care ombudsman, said people can find nursing homes for $4,000 to $5,000 a month.
“That’s probably a pretty good price, but they can go up to $10,000 or $15,000 a month.”
Mōʻiliʻili resident Faioso Leau has searched several times for her uncle, a 75-year-old with dementia.
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Silver Alert is a public notification system in certain US states to disseminate information about missing people, particularly seniors.
“If he's not supervised, he can forget why he's there and just wander off,” she said.
Leau and her aunt stayed up all night looking for him, but he never disappeared for more than a day.
“He was discovered traveling alone on the highway. The last time we found him he was sleeping in a car,” she said.
Faioso said she tried medical bracelets, bells and other alarm systems. She even thought about buying a GPS tracker to put in the sole of his shoe, but it was too expensive for her.
Even her father, who is over 80, suffers from dementia. And Leau had to make the difficult decision to place him in a nursing home.
“As we in our Pacific Islander families care for our loved ones as they grow old, I don't really have a lot of experience knowing what's out there, where to look and what numbers to call.”
But she has found support in Facebook groups to help her cope and has received advice from others who have loved ones with dementia.
“Once you realize they have dementia, it becomes easier to just enjoy them and accept that they can't remember and take the hits a little bit more rather than getting angry or resentful or it “personally,” she said.
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