Missing Florida Woman Found Dead in the Water

March 4, 2008 — -- The search for a missing elderly woman ended Monday when police found her body in the water near her assisted living center in Florida.

Her disappearance sparked a passionate campaign to find her as well as a debate on so-called "silver alerts."

When a child goes missing, every state has an Amber Alert program, which immediately goes into action to find them. But only a handful of states have a "silver alert" program, which helps find lost seniors in the same way that the Amber Alert works.

Mary Zelter, 86, signed herself out of the Regal Palms home for seniors in Key Largo, Feb. 26. She said she was headed for a short shopping trip and drove to a nearby supermarket, where she was last seen.

Though she suffered from bouts of dementia, her daughter Mary Lallucci said she had recently improved and had made other short trips to the store in the last month.

"This is totally unlike my mother," said her son Jim Zelter. "She was just totally organized."

When Zelter didn't return home, police put out a "Be on the Lookout" (BOLO) alert.

"We immediately put out a BOLO in the community," said Key Largo Police Chief Lester Aradi. "We get these types of calls all the time. Usually someone who walks away from a facility. We're looking for someone on foot. When a car is involved it's more complicated."

"Similar to Amber Alerts, people have talked about senior alerts, or silver alerts, as a warning system that is enacted when there is a wandering incident," said Peter Reed, a senior director at the Alzheimer's Association in Chicago.

Five states have a silver alert system and three more are working on adopting silver alert legislation. Florida, with the highest percentage of people older than 65 in the country, has no such law.

"If we had something like a silver alert we could certainly put it to use," said Aradi.

Worried family members flew in from around the country, holding rallies and putting up missing posters.

The police search revealed little, but an online record showed that her credit card was used one hour after she left her center. It hadn't been used since, and her car, a 2003 Chrysler convertible, hadn't been found either.

"We had the sheriff's helicopter up looking for a vehicle that has possibly run into some high brush or a waterway. That revealed a negative finding," said Aradi.

Media attention helped over the course of the week since her disappearance, but few clues turned up, leaving some to wonder what else could be done in the search for missing seniors.

On Monday evening two fishermen found her body near a public boat ramp in Clearwater. Clearwater Fire & Rescue divers are currently looking for Zelter's car in the water nearby.

Some think a silver alert system could have helped, including Zelter's family.

"The state of Florida absolutely should have this. We have a lot of senior citizens in this state and I can't believe that we don't have this and other states do and I think it absolutely could have made a difference," said Lallucci. "She was everything to us and we were everything to her."

According to the Alzheimer's Association, six in 10 people with dementia will wander at least once. With 5.1 million Americans estimated to suffer from Alzheimer's, an alert system could bring peace of mind to millions more families.

Experts predict tracking the elderly will grow into a full-fledged industry when 78 million baby boomers reach old age.