When Estella Mozelle Pierce walked away from her southwest Detroit home in April 2005, her family was sure that the police would begin looking for her immediately.
Instead, family members said, they were on their own after two Detroit officers told them that they would have to wait 24 to 48 hours before making a missing person’s report. Until then, nothing would be done, they said they were told.
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“I felt like that mat you walk on when you come through the door — I was hurt,” said her son, Tony Pierce, 54, of Redford Township. “Their attention was not going to be on us.”
But Estella Pierce was not just any missing person. She was 79 and suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes. It’s a profile that, under a new state law, will now require law enforcement agencies to respond quicker when an older or vulnerable person disappears.
Five days after Pierce vanished, her body was found next to railroad tracks, about seven blocks from her home. The Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office said she died of a heart attack after falling down an embankment.
In response, Pierce’s family approached state legislators to pass a law similar to the one that created the AMBER Alert, but for elderly people and those with dementia.
AMBER Alert is named after 9-year-old Amber Hagerman of Texas, who was kidnapped and murdered in 1996. But the name also is an acronym for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response and requires law enforcement to issue public bulletins to news media outlets immediately when a child is reported missing.
So on June 19, seven years after Pierce’s death, Gov. Rick Snyder signed the Mozelle Senior Or Vulnerable Adult Medical Alert Act.
Under the act, police must take a report regarding a missing person as soon as a department is notified. Police must forward that information to all law enforcement agencies that have jurisdiction in the area where the person disappeared.
Police also must give the information to at least one broadcast outlet in the area.
For law enforcement officers, the law makes it considerably easier for them to enter a missing vulnerable adult’s name and information into the Law Enforcement Information Network system without time-delaying verifications.
Despite that victory, the Pierce family and advocates for those with dementia say many law enforcement agencies and caregivers of dementia patients have no idea that the “Silver Alert” law exists.
“People don’t know it is in effect, and I want to make sure people utilize it,” said Dionne Pierce-Clemmons, 41, of Redford Township, Estella Pierce’s granddaughter. “I’m in the process of getting the word out about the bill.”
She’s become an ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Association and joined the effort to get a similar bill passed nationally. About 28 states have Silver Alert laws.
“This law is not effective if people are not aware,” said Roger Bushnell, a member of the board of directors of the Alzheimer’s Association and executive director of Maple Heights Retirement Community in Allen Park.
In Michigan, there are 273,000 people who have different forms of dementia, and that includes 195,000 with Alzheimer’s disease, said Preston Martin, vice president of the Greater Michigan Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Martin said the association is working with law enforcement officials, educating them about the law. “The process has already begun,” he said.
The association sent out news releases and spoke to law enforcement agencies.
“Right now, it’s really where we’re putting the effort. We really want to put the word out about this,” Bushnell said.
State Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker, R-Lawton and an attorney, pushed to get the bill passed.
She said that in the last legislative session, 12 to 13 bills were signed into law that deal with vulnerable adults.
Among the bills were laws that call for stiffer penalties for cases of financial abuse and one that makes it possible for employees at nursing homes to report abuse directly to state officials without worrying about repercussions from their employer.
Schuitmaker said that more has to be done to educate the public about the new laws.
“It’s the law,” she said. “They should be following it. More work has to be done. So much of it is education.”
Milton Agay, police chief for the Berrien Springs Oronoko Township Police Department and member of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police legislative committee, said the new laws proved helpful to police already.
As people learned about new laws protecting those who report elder abuse, there’s been an increase in reports, he said.
In his jurisdiction, there are 32 adult foster care homes and people have wandered away.
“Now, there’s a mechanism for us to get the information on these people in the state computer system,” Agay said. “It gets the word out quicker.”
Prior to the law, police were required to get certain signatures from appropriate people to verify that the missing person had dementia or was on life-sustaining medication before their name would be placed in LEIN.
“Just a few too many hoops that had to be jumped through,” Agay said.
Now, the word of those who are familiar with the missing person is enough to get things started, he said.
Agay said the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police sent out information about the new law to the group’s 600 members and highlighted bills in articles in their magazine.
“With these now enhanced laws, they actually put another tool in our toolbox,” Agay said.
