Family grateful for Colorado police K-9 rescue of missing woman with dementia

A Greenwood Village family is relieved after one of the police K-9s rescued a woman who had been missing for several hours.

“It’s really scary,” Peter Holman.

That’s what Holman felt after receiving a call from his mother’s caretaker on May 2nd. His 85-year-old mother Sandra, who suffers from dementia, had left the house and ran away.

“She has some mental impairments. She has no water. She’s not familiar with navigating home,” said Holman, who feared the worst. “Is she straying onto a street into oncoming traffic? Did she fall, hit her head and pass out somewhere? There is a stream that flows through the area. Did she fall into the stream?”

Holman quickly set out to find his mother wherever he could think of near her home, which is located at the Rollins D. Barnard Equestrian Park.

This wasn’t the first time she left her home due to her dementia; However, this is one of the few times Holman says his mother was scared.

“I rushed over and searched for two hours and couldn’t find her. I finally called the Greenwood Village Police Department and they were great and got someone on the case,” Holman said. “They said, ‘You know what? We have a K-9 unit. We’re going to put the K-9 unit on it,’ and I said, ‘K-9 unit? That sounds interesting.’ “

Officer Austin Speer and his K-9 Mercury responded to the call. They used clothing in Sandra’s house to detect her scent. Then. Mercury got to work, navigating through the park to Sandra.

“The dog performed excellently,” Holman said. “I mean, it was literally like seal mining. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was something out of a Hollywood movie.”

Mercury, who joined the police force a year and a half ago, was trained in missing persons searches and narcotics searches for this specific purpose. Mercury spent about a few minutes combing the park before finding Sandra clinging to a branch on a steep slope hidden in the park.

“The dog came to her and immediately comforted her, and Officer Speer was there and he kind of helped her out,” Holman said.

Holman says this rescue is a testament to how important units like this are to help those in the community who need it most.

“I walked through that park twice, maybe three times, and within 10 minutes they had found my mother,” he said. “She was scared but elated when she was rescued.”