By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – A 72-year-old Onalaska man overdue on a trip home from Arizona was found nearly unconscious laying on a remote road in southwestern Utah and is recovering from hypothermia.
Iron County Sheriff Mark Gower said he now knows the man had recently been diagnosed with Ahlzheimers and had been traveling from Congress, Arizona back to Washington.
It was about 8 a.m. on Wednesday when employees with the water conservation district came across a Jeep abandoned in the middle of the road, west of Cedar City, Utah, Gower said.
About a mile farther, they found him, unresponsive and cold, shirtless and shoeless, he said. Temperatures had dipped into the mid-20s that night, he said.
Deputies and then an ambulance responded and took him to an area hospital, he said.
“When they got him there, his core temperature was 82 degrees, which is very cold,” he said.
The sheriff didn’t release the man’s name, but said family has traveled to Utah to be with him.
“He is going to make it,” Gower said this afternoon.
The sheriff’s office tracked down his family from papers either on the patient or in his vehicle, he said. The family had been trying to track him by his bank card use, he said.
Gower said he wasn’t sure what if any agency took a missing person report.
“I guess he had a cell phone, but he was not answering,” he said.
Sheriff Gower said the thanks belong to the employees of the water district.
Gower said he’s been with the sheriff’s office over 25 years, and worked several similar cases.
“Most of the time they end more tragic than this,” he said. “We usually find them after it’s too late.”
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter