Law enforcement and health officials have found 72-year-old Paul “Tom” Gray, who went missing earlier this week from an assisted living facility in Durango.
Durango Police Department Cmdr. Jacob Dunlop said Gray was located about 2:30 p.m. near Four Corners Junction Creek Health and Rehabilitation Center at 2911 Junction St., where he was being treated for dementia and had walked out on Tuesday.
“He was within a mile of his care facility, but in a wooded natural space area,” Dunlop said.
Though Dunlop was not able to provide many details of Gray’s condition, he did say he was in need of medical attention, and was being loaded into an ambulance around 2:45 p.m. Thursday, two days after he walked out of his care facility.
Dani Schmidt, Gray’s niece, wrote in a text that he was in Mercy Hospital being treated.
“He is alive and stable and his vitals look good,” Schmidt wrote. “Very very dehydrated, disoriented and covered in scratches. But he is found and alive.”
Schmidt said in an earlier interview that Gray left his care facility on Tuesday afternoon.
“(The center) does not have cameras on their facilities, so we do not know if he went right or left on Junction Creek Road,” Schmidt said.
DPD Cmdr. Jacob Dunlop said the department received a report of a walkaway from the facility Tuesday afternoon. Officers immediately responded to the scene, began coordinating with Four Corners Health and started searching the immediate area.
The initial search did not prove fruitful, Dunlop said, so the department began coordinating with the community and La Plata County Search and Rescue to organize a larger search. La Plata County activated Code Red alerts to send out Gray’s description.
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
