The search for a missing Pike County woman who suffers from Alzheimer’s approached the critical 48-four mark today as officials fanned out across the rugged Franklin County back country after discovering her vehicle abandoned there Tuesday.
Lottie Myers, 73, of Summit, was last seen at 1:47 p.m. Monday, driving south on Willis Cotton Road in a 2015 Silver Jeep Cherokee wearing faded blue jean shorts and a gray T-shirt.
Her stepdaughter, Stacy Myers Lawson said the Jeep turned up Tuesday in the McCall Creek community of Franklin County, but Myers was nowhere to be found.
“Somebody who lived on that road saw her walking down the road and they asked her if she had needed any help because they saw the Jeep and she told them no and she was looking for her husband,” she said.
Sheriff’s officials from surrounding counties and some as far away as Madison and Rankin counties, as well as search dog teams, helicopters, drones and other resources have deployed to the area where her vehicle was found, Pike County Sheriff Wally Jones said.
“They were really organized,” Lawson said.
She said a neighbor’s security camera detected her stepmother’s last movements.
“I think she got lost,” Lawson said, noting that she was headed towards Highway 570 West but somehow ended up in a totally different direction in McCall Creek.
“That’s way out there,” she said.
Lawson said her father went to get some food shortly before Myers disappeared.
“I think she’s at that phase in Alzheimer’s when he’s out of her sight she starts to panic,” she said. “Usually she’s fine being at home because she doesn’t go anywhere.”
Lawson, who used to live in Franklin County, said she’s familiar with its hilly topography and expansive dense forests, and she knows how the geography alone complicates the search.
“The direction she was seen headed, it turned into a dirt road and it just kept winding. It’s very snaky,” she said. “They were having trouble seeing through the trees because of it being so thick.”
She said searchers are trying to cover as much ground as possible.
“They’re fanning it out. They’re working their way out and they’re covering all the ground and they’re marking the areas they’ve covered for her so they’re not looking in the same spot over and over,” Lawson said. “They have different teams that get together and they go out. People on four-wheelers and side-by-sides. They’re just trying to fan it out and work their way out.”
Lawson said she worries that Myers has gone too long without provisions or medicine.
“She’s scared to death and she’s very fragile,” she said. “She gets really nervous and she breaks down and starts crying so easily, and I know she’s just so terrified because she can’t find her way home.”
