Home News Tribune Online 01/29/07

SOUTH BRUNSWICK — The missing-persons case could easily have ended tragically.

It was below freezing outside Wednesday night when the 73-year-old man with Alzheimer's disease left his home on Sturgis Road in South Brunswick on foot. He was traveling fast, it was later learned, and he was heading toward the Delaware & Raritan Canal.

Township police, however, found the man quickly. They are crediting a new effort by the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office and county officials to organize searches for local police departments. The Prosecutor's Office issued directives in August that outline steps police need to take in searches involving "at risk" missing people.

Part of those directives involve having police call the Office of Emergency Management in Middlesex County when specialized resources, such as search dogs, are needed. The county OEM would in turn call in volunteer search and rescue teams, the ones that found a 10-year-old Sayreville boy in October 2005 after he had been missing for two days.

The new policy, coupled with the Middlesex County OEM's push for the formal involvement of expert search-and-rescue teams, places the county in the vanguard of how missing-persons searches are handled in New Jersey.

It is second only to Atlantic County in terms of how quickly it has adopted the idea of getting experts on the job quickly.

After township police determined the man was an "at risk" missing person because of his disease Wednesday, they set up a command post and volunteers were called in.

Police questioned his wife and went to areas the man has frequented, finding a service-station attendant who saw him.

That tip led township officer Joseph Rausch to search on Bunker Hill Road in Franklin. Rausch found the missing man there at 9 p.m., about 3 1/2 miles from the man's home and two hours after he left.

The missing man was about a mile from the Delaware & Raritan Canal.

"He was definitely on a path heading toward the canal," Rausch said.

Barbara Tucker, 75, the man's wife, said the answer to one question she was asked by police may have helped.

"They asked me if he was right-handed," she said, which led her to tell them he favored directions to his right.

"He crossed over Route 27 in the dark," she said. "That's one reason why it was so scary."

Had her husband gone missing before the changes that came down in August, the department may not have set up the search operation as quickly.

"There's a bigger emphasis on the urgency now of finding a missing person," said township Police Chief Raymond Hayducka. "The quicker you can get the job going, the better chance you have of finding someone."

The directives from the Prosecutor's Office provide "a hard and fast guide," to marshaling resources, Hayducka said.

Had the search gone on any longer, the township would have contacted the county OEM, Hayducka said.

The system is still evolving.

The township called a New Jersey State Police K-9 unit to get dogs to the scene. They were on the way when the man was found.

More specialized search dogs could have been found just as quickly through the county OEM.

Eric Martin, volunteer coordinator of search-and-rescue operations for Middlesex County and the president of the Search and Rescue Council of New Jersey, said police departments in the county have established good ties to the council.

He has so far trained police in Old Bridge, Plainsboro and Sayreville. It was Martin whose efforts in October 2005 led to the successful location of Manny Vargas, the 10-year-old Sayreville boy.

A bill introduced by Assemblyman John Wisniewski, D-Middlesex, that would set up similar protocols statewide is awaiting a hearing in the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee.

On Friday, Wisniewski said his goal is to push the bill through before the end of June, at the end of the state budget process.