"It Was a Good Day"
“It Was a Good Day”
Her family member arrived home last Friday to the worst-case scenario.
She wasn’t there. She was nowhere to be found – not in the house and not in the yard along Bell’s Lane in West Liberty. She was nowhere in sight.
Panicked, the loved one called Ohio County 911 and members of the West Liberty Volunteer Fire Department, deputies of the Ohio County Sheriff’s Office, and employees of the Emergency Management Agency immediately responded.
“When we first arrived to the home, we saw a lot of the neighbors outside yelling for her,” explained Lou Vargo, the director of the county EMA. “A couple of them even were riding ATVs so they could cover as much ground as possible because they knew time was of the essence. That’s always the case when we are searching for a missing person.
“The first thing we do in these cases is talk with the family members so we can ask several questions. Does she have a favorite spot nearby? Does she have other friends in the area? Are there any pets buried in the area? Is she suffering from a dementia-related disease? That’s what we did in this case because asking those questions might give us some sort of direction when we start looking for her.”
And then the operation began.
“At that point, we collect everyone we have for the search so we can work together instead of repeating efforts,” Vargo said. “We mapped the area, and that’s when we sent different teams in different directions so we knew we were covering all of the necessary areas.
“The search area is a very nice neighborhood pretty close to West Liberty University,” he added. “It’s rural, though, and the roads out there aren’t the best, so we had our work cut out for us.”
One Ohio County deputy, Lt. Rod Vaught, operated a drone, too, in case she was still moving.
“It’s relatively new technology for Ohio County, but in some cases the perspective above the scene can really help us in the search,” he said. “As it turned out, where I was operating the drone was not the area where she turned out to be, but when you first arrive for a search for a missing person, the possibilities are really endless.”
Deputies instead discovered the elderly woman in the deep woods approximately 100 yards away from her home.
“When we arrived to the scene, she was laying on the ground,” Vargo recalled. “But she was alive. She told us, after she was unable to find her way back home, she decided to lay down because she was tired.
“It was a very wooded area where we found her, so it’s pretty likely the drone would not have seen her where we found her,” he said. “Dementia did play a part in this case, according to her family member, so we suggested they contact the Ohio County Sheriff’s Office to get information on Project Lifesaver.”
Project Lifesaver is a tracking system available in most counties in West Virginia and Ohio. In Ohio County, W.Va., and Belmont County, Ohio, Project Lifesaver is administered and operated by the respective sheriff’s offices, and in Marshall County, the primary contact for the system in the EMA office.
There is a cost for Project Lifesaver, but we believe it’s worth it because, if this woman would have been wearing the bracelet, we would have been able to find much easier,” Vargo explained. “We still did, though, because of the quick response by all of the agencies. That’s the only reason it was a good day for all involved.”
