A dementia ward resident of the Long Island State Veterans Home walked out the front door, and was missing for more than three hours on Sept. 12.

‘We enacted our elopement plan and we put a series of things into place to utilize our employees,’ Fred Sganga, the director of the home, said.

The veterans’ home gives all ambulatory residents of the dementia ward a wristwatch with a built in GPS tracking device. ‘We tell them it’s a gift from the residents home,’ Sganga said. The system, controlled and programmed by Home Free Security, had failed when the resident walked out the door and the alarm did not sound.

Employees at the home called Stony Brook University Police at 12:12 p.m. and the Suffolk County Sixth Precinct an hour later.

‘It was a group effort,’ Robert J. Lenahan, chief of Stony Brook University Police, said. The home’s employees helped in the search, as well as the police. ‘What we can do is assign areas and do a grid search,’ Lenahan said. More than 30 people were involved in the search, including K-9 units.

An employee of the home found the resident, whose name was witheld because of the Health Insurance Portability and Acountability Act, on the corner of Health Sciences Drive and Nichols Road at 3:45 p.m.

‘The biggest problem was that he was hungry because he missed lunch,’ Sganga said.
Home Free Security is investigating why their system failed and will notify the veterans’ home of their findings.