Lost in the shuffle

Kari Huus Reporter • Profile • E-mail

Where is Olympia Reeves? In the rush to evacuate New Orleans amid rising flood waters, the 87-year-old was moved from her Uptown home to the city's convention center, family members say, and then she disappeared without a trace. There is good reason to believe she is alive, but unable to make her way back to family, and possibly unable to tell anyone her name. Reeves suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.

One relative who has been on the case since right after the storm is Dinah “Penny” Ambeau-Scott, who is married to Olympia's great-nephew. She was able to confirm with the 45th Infantry National Guard from Oklahoma that they evacuated Olympia to the New Orleans convention center.

The National Guard captain "said they took her from the house to the convention center, and that’s all they had," says Ambeau-Scott. At one point, Ambeau-Scott began calling every hospital in the region, alphabetically. An elderly woman with a similar profile turned up, and Ambeau-Scott thought she had located Olympia. But after exchanging pictures, she learned otherwise. "I just keep hitting a brick wall," she says.

Olympia is one of more than 6,000 people still reported missing after Hurricane Katrina hit. She is also a reminder of how great a toll the disaster took among elderly people, who were evacuated by the thousands from long-term care facilities, died in larger numbers than other groups and arguably suffered most in sweltering shelters and unfamiliar settings.

The non-profit Cajun Area Agency for the Aging has networked with state agencies, cross-checking lost-and-found persons lists and called scores of nursing homes in the effort to find Olympia. Still, 12 weeks after the storm the search has come up empty-handed.

“It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” says Shannon Broussard, director of the agency, which has posted pictures on its Web site of people who, like Olympia, are lost and disabled. “We’ve exhausted all avenues in the search for these people.”

Trauma could worsen dementia
In a picture taken in better times, Olympia looks confident and lucid — her gray hair swept away from her face as she smiles at the camera. She was in the relatively early stages of Alzheimer's disease, so she still lived in her own home, with nurse aides to help her.

But getting lost in a disaster is terrifying for someone suffering dementia, experts say, and could exacerbate the difficulty of remembering and coping.

"When you are evacuated to a place you don’t recognize and don't know anybody, it makes it worse," says Broussard. "It might push you to the next stages of Alzheimer's sooner."

Also pictured on the CAAA site are 82-year old Ethel Herbert, who has Alzheimer's and was separated from her daughter when she was airlifted from the New Orleans Superdome, according to e-mail sent by the Louisiana Nursing Home Association to care facilities. Two others are elderly women who were found after the storm and placed in homes, but whose identity remains uncertain and whose families cannot be located.

"Most of the elderly who are out of state and might be a Jane or John Doe are individuals who were in their homes or in personal care situations," says John Donchess, executive director of the state nursing home association.

But many nursing home patients also went missing in the early days after the storm. "In some situations, patients were literally separated from the rest of nursing home staff and ended up at the airport to be treated. And they would just kind of be flown out helter-skelter by FEMA," says Donchess.

Elderly hit hard by hurricane chaos
No one can say how many people suffering dementia or other mental disabilities were displaced, or misplaced, in the hurricane. The National Center for Missing Adults says there are 6,644 people still missing from Katrina. A portion of those people, perhaps 20 percent, are dead, according to the center.

Of 539 Katrina victims so far identified in Louisiana, 64 percent were older than 60, according to the state Department of Health and Hospitals. Sixty-six of the fatalities were nursing home residents who were abandoned by staff or evacuated too late. Those cases have prompted criminal investigations.

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