Elderly man with dementia found alive after 2 days in Mojave Desert
CUDDEBACK LAKE, SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY (KABC) -- An elderly man with dementia, who had wandered away from his family at a Mojave Desert campsite Monday, was found alive Wednesday.
Eyewitness News arrived on scene just as 86-year-old Rolland Ronnie Towne was being treated -- bruised, bloodied and dehydrated but alive.
"Well, I'm doing pretty good," Towne told Eyewitness News. "I've got a few marks here and there, pretty decent actually."
Towne, who suffers from dementia and diabetes, wandered away from his campsite off of Highway 395 near Cuddeback Road and Fremont Peak early Monday morning, where he had been staying with his family.
"They woke up, they seen their grandpa outside picking up brass from spent casings, and then they went back inside, they fell back to sleep, they woke back up at 6:30 and noticed that he was gone," said San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department Deputy Tommy Dickey.
When the family couldn't find him, they called 911.
"We had air, helicopters, airplanes, horseback, OHV, people on foot, everything," Dickey said.
Besides the cold temperatures at night, search and rescue officials say there was another danger Towne faced - rattlesnakes.
"Between the three days, we've seen seven snakes," said Steve Depue, a search and rescue team member with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.
Finally, with the situation growing desperate, they found him around 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, about a mile and a half from the campsite.
"He was actually laying down and had his back to us, and as I was walking up to him I called his name, Ronnie, and he sat up, which was not what I was expecting. It was kind of a, 'Wow! We got to get this guy some help now,'" Depue said.
Search and rescue crews say they always have hope in these kinds of situations, but on the third day, they knew this situation was growing dire.
"We actually have three people, not too far from here, that we've never found, so this comes out as fantastic results," Depue said.
