Silver Alert tracks missing seniors...

Silver Alert tracks missing seniors www.tennessean.com The Tennessean:

Silver Alert tracks missing seniors

It took only minutes for Morris Nelson to grab the keys to his Ford Explorer and drive away from his Mt. Juliet home, but it took his family and police 12 hours to find him.

And when they did, he was miles away, confused and frightened in a Pulaski, Tenn., neighborhood.

Nelson is one of the more than 100,000 Tennesseans living with Alzheimer's disease. Advocates for the aged hope Nelson and others like him will benefit from legislation being drafted now for a new Silver Alert program used to track missing senior citizens.

About a dozen states have started notification systems to help spread the word when senior citizens wander away on foot or by car. At least a dozen more, including Tennessee, are expected to follow suit within the next year.

Silver Alert programs are modeled after the Amber Alert program, which is used to find missing children. That program was named for a child who went missing.

'It's just as good an idea as the Amber Alert is,' said Jane Bradley, Nelson's daughter. 'Things are in place to do this. The need is going to grow for this. We've got so many people living so much longer and every time I turn around somebody else is suffering with dementia and Alzheimer's.'

More than 10 million baby boomers are expected to develop Alzheimer's disease. An additional 4 million will get some other form of dementia or cognitive impairment, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

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