From Cowtown Cop:
The Old Man
"I213 copy call, there is an elderly male at the Carnival food store, caller states male is out in the cold and is disoriented."
It was a cold windy day and the call load had been accordingly slow. It seems like a good cold snap will almost always kill the crime rate. I headed that way confident that someone either left their grandpop outside the store while they shopped or that it would just be someone waiting on a ride.
I pulled up in front of the store and found him, an elderly gentleman dressed in threadbare thin clothing holding a plastic bag with a few belongings in them. He was standing near the front door staring vacantly out into the parking lot. I got out and walked over to him. As I walked the guy running the taco stand called me over and said that he was the one that called. He said that the elderly man got dropped off in front of the store several hours ago and has just been standing there.
A bit more:
We started the age old process of trying to communicate between two folks that have a slim grasp of the others language. I finally gathered that he was trying to get home and that he lived somewhere on College Ave. What I also discovered that he had Alzheimer's and that his family in Florida put him on a bus and sent him back here. This I gathered from some medical papers that he had with him and a bus ticket from Miami. He had a perfect recollection of his house and life on College Ave but no memory whatsoever of the last few days. I have had the painful experience of watching my own grandfather die of this disease.
We drove up and down College Ave looking for his home. He pointed out a house that he seemed to think was his but the people that lived there now had never heard of him and had lived there for around 10 years. I was rapidly loosing hope of finding a place for him to stay. I had gathered that he was in his eighties and was in no condition to face the crowd at the night shelters. The county hospital would not take him if he didn't have an emergency medical complaint.
And what made the day "interesting":
Finally to my great surprise he found an old worn passport with all his information on it. I gleefully entered his name into the computer and waited for a response. What I got back was a surprise, a murder warrant for his arrest.
There is a good bit more to the story at Cowtown Cop. A curious read...
