A 78-year-old Beavercreek man who went missing from his home in late January was found dead by a Mercer County farmer in late April. Robert W. Hageman was the subject of an endangered missing adult alert starting on Jan. 30 and ending on April 20 after Hageman drove away from his home and did not return. His vehicle was found nearly 80 miles away on U.S. 127 near Overdrive Entertainment south of Celina in Mercer County.
“He was in the early stages of dementia,” Robert A. Hageman, son of the previously missing Robert W. Hageman, told the Dayton Daily News. While he could be forgetful, Hageman said his father’s behavior wasn’t erratic.
“Even his doctor said that eventually he would need somebody to supervise him, but he was not at that point yet,” Hageman said.
Hageman’s father typically didn’t like to go places, he said, but they speculated he left to escape robocalls. Hageman said his father could get up to 50 of those calls a day.
“It was a surprise because he’s normally that type of person who doesn’t want to go anywhere,” Hageman said. “To get a break, I imagine he probably went out window shopping.”
When Hageman went to his father’s home that night and didn’t find him there, he checked with his siblings to see if he had visited them. When his father hadn’t returned, they eventually went to the police for help while also going out to look for him.
With Hageman being in a vehicle and not having a cell phone or another way to track him, police say it made the search difficult.
“Neither the family or us had any idea what direction he may have gone, or a possible destination,” said Capt. Shawn C. Sumner of the Beavercreek Police Department. “Our agency used all available resources to look for and to attempt to locate Mr. Hageman.”
The car belonging to Hageman’s father was found the next day in Mercer County, but it wouldn’t be until April 20 when his father was found by a farmer on land near to where the vehicle had been located, approximately 1,100 feet away.
What happened after his father went missing up until he was found still raises questions for Hageman, but one speculation they have is that he got lost after leaving.
“We think he just got stuck out after night, just couldn’t find his way back, and…we’re very frustrated. It didn’t have to end this way,” Hageman said.
Hageman had previously been considering going into an early retirement to be his father’s full-time caregiver.
“I was even going to go as far as taking an early retirement, stay here, and just make sure that he did not go to a home, because we’ve had bad experiences with that, and we didn’t want to do that. He wasn’t bad at that point, but eventually he would have been,” Hageman said. “He was my only...friend that I hung out with. There was my best friend. He’s gone.”
It’s the disease
Experts reinforced how wandering can be a difficult behavior to manage as physical changes within the brain lead to cognitive issues, particularly leading to short term memory loss and forgetting where you are. This may lead people with dementia to forget the home they have been living in for 50 years, or even forget a spouse or ever being married, Ritchey said.
“It is the disease itself and what’s happening in the brain,” Ritchey said. “What’s happening is parts of the brain aren’t functioning properly and that may cause us to act erratically.”
People with dementia may be trying to get to a place where they think they’re supposed to be, like to job or a bus stop to pick up children, even if they no longer work or their children have grown.
“My mother had Alzheimer’s. She lived in a memory care community. One time they called me, and they had lost her inside the community,” Ritchey said. “She was in a walk-in linen closet. She went in there to fold towels because she was a stay-at-home mother and that made sense to her, and she was bored. She didn’t have anything else to do.”
Wandering tends to be one of the most bothersome and one of the most difficult behaviors to control in dementia patients, said Dr. Carlos Ventura, a physician with Kettering Health Medical Group. It is also difficult for people to be around-the-clock caregivers, he said.
The difficulty of caring for someone with dementia who may wander is why some families look to nursing homes for help, but another recent case of a person going missing involved a woman with dementia leaving a local nursing home.
Penny Boddie, 63, left in a manual wheelchair from the Mary Scott Nursing Home on May 14 and was later found deceased on May 17. No foul play is suspected in the death of Boddie, who suffered from early-onset dementia and diabetes but did not have the insulin she needed, Dayton police said last month.
The Ohio Department of Health is investigating the incident, and pending the outcome of the investigation, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will issue their decision and may impose penalties. A representative for Mary Scott Nursing Home declined to comment.
What can families do
Families and caregivers taking care of someone with dementia who wanders can try strategies to keep the patient engaged or distracted from wandering. If patients with dementia are bored, families and caregivers can try to incorporate aspects from the patient’s life, such as how they spent the majority of their time.
Families can try camouflaging the door of the home, Ritchey said, such has putting a towel over the door handle as eyesight also tends to deteriorate due to the disease.
“You’re not a bad family member or caregiver if your loved one wandered. Unfortunately, it’s very common. It’s really just thinking ahead (of the) worst case scenario of if my loved one walked out the front door, how would I find them again,” Ritchey said.
“Family members should contact law enforcement, as soon as possible, when a loved one who suffers from dementia/Alzheimer’s goes missing,” Sumner said. “It is extremely important for families that have a family member who suffers from dementia/Alzheimer’s and is at risk of wandering off and getting disoriented/lost, for them to plan for this and take steps to be able to locate them. They can utilize technology, cell phone or other GPS type of device, that the person could have on them or be wearing, so as to be able to locate them more quickly and be able to get them home safely.”
Patients who may have the symptoms of dementia—including memory loss, difficulty concentrating, finding it hard to carry out familiar daily tasks, struggling to follow a conversation or find the right word, being confused about time and place, and/or mood changes—should also seek help from doctors.
“Look for those signs early. The patient himself or herself can be very, very reluctant to accept there’s a problem,” Ventura said. “The earlier it is checked out by a proper trained physician or provider, the earlier we can start the conversation on what are the palliative treatments to do.”
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