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Paulikas, Nancy 10-15-16; Los Angeles, CA - age 55 missing endange
Topic Started: Dec 19 2016, 05:53 PM (103 Views)
tatertot
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http://www.dailybreeze.com/general-news/20...rce=most_viewed

POSTED: 12/18/16, 4:15 PM PST | UPDATED: 10 HRS AGO
Family of Manhattan Beach woman missing for two months focus search on care facilities

It’s been two months since Nancy Paulikas wandered away from a visit with her family to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and one since they held a news conference pleading for tips leading to her return.

But despite a highly organized search effort, there is still no trace of the Manhattan Beach woman, whose early-onset Alzheimer’s disease has impaired her ability to communicate. Her 56th birthday passed in November.

“I’m just flabbergasted that she hasn’t been found yet,” said husband Kirk Moody. “Everybody in law enforcement gives me the impression that, given how hard we’ve searched for her, it’s unbelievable they haven’t found her.”

Last week, Moody and friends — who have spent weeks calling hospitals and homeless shelters — mailed fliers to 5,000 elder care residential facilities in Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties.

They’re hoping that she’s just lost in the system, that someone will finally identify a Jane Doe as Paulikas.

HOLDING OUT HOPE

Paulikas was last seen walking west near Wilshire Boulevard and McCarthy Vista about 3 p.m. Oct. 15. She is described as white, 5-feet, 7-inches tall and 140 pounds, with a thin build, grayish brown hair and blue eyes. She was wearing a red, long-sleeve blouse with a white pattern, blue jeans, glasses and navy blue sneakers.

“We’ve been checking coroner’s offices in seven counties and there’s nothing that matches,” said Sgt. Paul Ford of the Manhattan Beach Police Department. “We’re still trying to hold out hope for her ending up in a hospital or even a home.”

The department also is looking for another resident with memory problems who hasn’t been seen since he apparently drove away from his Manhattan Beach home last week — 88-year-old Theodore Garcia.

DATA ANALYSTS COMB FOR CLUES

On Friday, Moody met with officials from the state’s Medi-Cal program, which will be checking databases for new patients without Social Security numbers who enrolled after Paulikas disappeared.

Moody was recently contacted by someone whose sister-in-law similarly disappeared in 1999 and was found days later under a false identity in a care facility collecting medical reimbursements. The story was shared on his blog, nancyismissing.blogspot.com.

Matt Lewis, a family friend, is stunned that Paulikas could be missing for so long in the age of social media.

“Our team is not going to find Nancy,” he said. “Somebody in L.A. that we believe is going to be moving or working in a residential care facility is going to be the one that spots Nancy and says, ‘Wait a minute, that’s her.’”

Amy Landers, director of early stage services for the Alzheimer’s Association of Greater Los Angeles, said, in her experience, most patients who go missing turn up in hours or days. Paulikas’ case is unusual.

“I’ve been working here for 10 years and I’ve never seen a case go on for this long,” Landers said, adding that better-connected systems are needed among first responders, hospitals and rehabilitation facilities.

Her organization is heading up a task force for dementia-friendly communities, part of a joint city and county effort called the Purposeful Aging L.A. Initiative.

Moody hopes the Medi-Cal data analysts or the mass mailings will provide the missing link. He hasn’t ruled out homeless shelters, but doubts they could provide the kind of care his wife requires.

Anyone with information about Paulikas’ whereabouts is urged to contact Detective Mike Rosenberger of the Manhattan Beach Police Department at 310-802-5140 or a tipline at 310-650-7965.
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tatertot
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http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la...1129-story.html

Column A middle-aged woman with Alzheimer's, no money and no transportation vanished in Los Angeles. Now the search is on
Kirk Moody is asking for help finding his wife, Nancy Paulikas, a 55-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s disease who went missing during a visit to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Steve Lopez Contact Reporter

Friends, relatives and even strangers have joined the search party.

Police in Los Angeles and Manhattan Beach have distributed bulletins and been on the lookout.

Tip-trackers are chasing leads, hospitals have been put on notice and ads have been run in The Times and elsewhere.

But as of Tuesday, there was still no sign of a Manhattan Beach woman who disappeared six and a half weeks ago.

Nancy Paulikas had gone with family to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Oct. 15, went to the bathroom, and vanished. Surveillance video from nearby businesses shows her walking southwest toward Carthay Circle a few moments later, but that was the last sighting of the UCLA engineering alum known for her once-brilliant mind and love of the outdoors.

With each passing week, the disappearance seems more baffling, and all the more frustrating for those who care about Paulikas.

Kirk Moody, Paulikas’ husband, emailed me about his wife after reading my recent column on my mother’s dementia. My mother tried to escape the hospital she was admitted to, which isn’t uncommon. According to the Alzheimer’s Assn., 6 in 10 people with dementia are prone to wandering.

But Moody doubts this was a case of his wife simply going for a walk.

“People ask me how I did not go to the bathroom with her or send somebody with her,” said Moody, who used the men’s restroom while his wife was in the women’s.

His answer is that “it never entered my mind that she would roam.” She feared being separated from groups, and particularly from him. She must have come out of the bathroom and when she didn’t immediately see him, she went looking.

“I’m convinced she went right out of that museum looking for me,” Moody said.

Ever since, he’s been looking for her.

He took me into the kitchen of his Manhattan Beach home, the home where his wife’s condition rapidly deteriorated in the year before her disappearance. The kitchen is set up like a command center, with maps splayed against walls next to lists of contact information for the army of volunteers, some of whom worked in the aerospace industry alongside Paulikas and Moody.

“The first night, we drove back up there at 4 in the morning,” Moody says of the neighborhood around LACMA. “It’s soul-sucking because it’s so huge. You drive down two streets and think, ‘My God, I could be doing this for four hours and not cover two miles.’”

That’s part of the challenge. It’s not as if Paulikas lost her way in a small village. She’s been swallowed by the sprawl, lost in a teeming city where it’s possible to go unnoticed and unrecognized. A city in which, if you appear disoriented or homeless, you blend into a flock tens of thousands strong.

She had no money, so she couldn’t hail a cab, and might have been confused about how to use a bus or train. Her mother, Joan, who lives in the Palos Verdes Estates house where Nancy grew up, doubts that her daughter would know her own name if someone asked. She had an ID bracelet but didn’t like wearing it and may have tossed it.

Joan Paulikas regrets not being with her daughter on her 56th birthday, Nov. 11, or Thanksgiving. She said that for Christmas, she will make the usual — a traditional Lithuanian family meal, “and hope.”

In a way, it’s as if Paulikas has disappeared twice, first behind the disease and then into the city of a million hiding places.

Moody has considered the worst-case scenario.

“I’ve been contacting the L.A. County coroner’s office, and so far, they haven’t received any Jane Does since Oct. 15,” he said. “They’ve all been identified.”

It’s possible she’s living on the street somewhere, but Moody doubts that the woman he began dating in 1988 would have survived. She couldn’t tend to basic needs, and he prepared all her meals.

It’s possible, if not likely, that someone kindhearted, or lonely, has taken her in and doesn’t know who she is or what to do with her.

Police haven’t ruled out anything, but they have their doubts about one possibility.

“We didn’t get any information that led us to believe there was foul play,” said Det. Samuel Soto of LAPD’s Adult Missing Persons Unit.

Soto said his six-person team fields 300 to 350 reports each month that someone is missing, but roughly 85% of those turn out to be what the department calls the “voluntary missing.” They tend to turn up quickly.

Paulikas, he said, isn’t the first person with severe dementia who’s gone missing.

“We have others who, for unknown reasons, will be admitted to hospitals under John or Jane Doe, and it does take some time to match them” to people in state and national missing persons databases.

Of all the possibilities, that’s the one Moody is pulling for. You can get insurance coverage as a Jane Doe if someone enrolls you in Medical, Moody said, so he’s asking social workers at hospitals and residential care facilities to be on the lookout for recent admissions that match such a profile.

Moody tears up when he talks about his wife being lost to everyone, including herself. He sheds a tear, as well, when talking about the community of friends her disappearance has spawned. A core group of a few dozen has been joined by strangers who heard about Paulikas and wanted to help in some way.

“It’s remarkable,” Moody said.

Nancy Ward, a close friend of Moody and Paulikas, has canvassed the LACMA neighborhood, posted fliers and manned the phones.

“Nancy just sparkled because of her intelligence,” Ward said. “They were always a very popular couple, and their home was open to everyone…. I think the horror of this is so staggering, we’re all drawn in because we can’t believe it’s happening.”

Moody told me he and his wife retired early so they’d have plenty of time for the things they loved, like long backpacking trips. Her decline took that from them, and even if she is found, there can be no happy ending.

But he wants her to be safe, and to be home.

Paulikas is 5 foot 7 and about 140 pounds, with glasses, brown-gray hair and blue eyes. The Manhattan Beach Police Department has taken the lead on the case, and Sgt. Paul Ford asks that anyone who spots Paulikas take a photograph of her and immediately dial 911.
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Begood
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Vigil Held for Manhattan Beach Woman Missing Since October During Trip to LACMA
POSTED 10:23 PM, NOVEMBER 17, 2016, BY CINDY VON QUEDNOW AND MARY BETH MCDADE, UPDATED AT 11:07PM, NOVEMBER 17, 2016


Friends and family members held a vigil Thursday evening for a Manhattan Beach woman with early onset Alzheimer's who has been missing since a trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Oct. 16.

Nancy Paulikas, 56, was separated from her family at the museum about 2:35 p.m. While her family thought she was in the restroom, video footage showed her leaving LACMA and walking west on Wilshire Boulevard.

Despite a county-wide search, she has not been found. A $1,000 reward is being offered for information about her whereabouts.

She had apparently never wandered away from her family before and she was not carrying a cellphone, ID or cash at the time.

A
A vigil was held for Nancy Paulikas on Nov. 17, 2016 at LACMA, where she was last seen before vanishing on Oct. 16. (Credit: KTLA)

Paulikas' husband Kirk Moody said family and friends have been searching for Paulikas for 33 days, with no luck. On Thursday they retraced her last known steps to raise awareness that she is still missing.

She is 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs about 140 pounds. She has light brownish-grey shoulder-length hair and blue eyes. She was last seen wearing a red shirt with a white pattern, jeans and blue sneakers.

Anyone with information about Paulikas' whereabouts can call 310-650-7965.

http://ktla.com/2016/11/17/vigil-held-for-...-trip-to-lacma/
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Begood
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https://www.facebook.com/nancyismissing/

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