Group of Kids Grab Bikes and Help Police Find Missing 97-Year-Old Woman with Dementia
A group of 10 and 11-year-old kids from Roseville, California, have been credited with finding a missing 97-year-old woman with dementia who had wandered away.
Glenneta Belford, 97, is mostly nonverbal and has dementia. She went missing on Sept. 30, prompting a police search.
When police from the city of Roseville asked for the public’s help in locating Belford, a group of bicycle-riding neighborhood kids rose to the challenge.
According to CNN, Hope Claiborne, 11, and her friend Makenna Rogers, 10, were playing in the neighborhood when they heard the call over loudspeakers that a 97-year-old woman had gone missing.
The girls ran to get Hope’s brother, Kashton Claiborne and his friend Logan Hultman, both 10, to help with the search.
“My friends Hope and Makenna were playing and they heard a helicopter saying a 97-year-old lady was missing,” Logan told CNN.
“So, they came to grab me and my friend Kashton and told us about the missing lady. We all grabbed our bikes and started searching.”
The kids rode their bicycles all over the neighborhood, through parks and down block after block until they stumbled upon a confused and disoriented Belford. The junior detectives did all the right things, calling police with the information and waiting with the woman until help arrived.
“She was talking to herself and kept saying ‘Go away, go away, I’m talking to my friend,’ but nobody was there,” Logan said. “Hope called 911 and we waited with her until they arrived.”
Roseville police officers were thrilled with the kids’ detective work, publicly praising the children on Facebook.
“As it turns out, they were the team to locate the missing 97-year-old,” Roseville police wrote on Facebook. “Our surprised dispatchers took the initial call from this team of junior detectives, which helped connect officers to the missing person.”
“This proves a great point, age is just a number and anyone can help out in a time of need,” the department wrote.
Hope and Kashton’s father, Daniel Claiborne, was proud of his kids for helping with the search, and admitted he doubted their seriousness.
“I doubted them [when they told me they were going to go find her],” Claiborne told CNN. “I was like, ‘Yeah, OK, go have fun, be safe on your bikes,’ and they were like, ‘No Dad, seriously, we are gonna find her, we’re gonna get our friends, we’re gonna find her.'”
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