dementia patient hit by train

The first time my dad went missing, he was really lost.  The second time, though, he was angry.  He was going to go walk in front of a truck.  He wouldn't get into my car (once he was located) and it took a police officer to get him into a vehicle and home.
It's really hard to judge how much people with dementia retain.  The last time I saw my dad before his catastrophic head injury, he surprised me by hugging me and saying he loved me.  Did he know who I was that day, or was he just happy "that girl who helps me" came to visit him at the nursing home?  I'd like to think it's the former.  In that situation, we all hope there was a spark of recognition there, just for that moment.
We'll never know what was in this dementia patient's mind when he managed to escape his nursing home and walk into a moving train on Saturday night.  The unidentified man, in his 70s, was not even reported missing by the nursing home until an hour after he had been hit by the train.  Who knows how long he was wandering outside in Canada in February.
Police said the train engineer sounded the warning horn, but the man continued to walk toward the train....(T)he man was conscious, breathing and talking when first responders arrived.

Mighty fine reporting there.  Conscious and breathing?  Talking and breathing?  I think the breathing is a given when someone is conscious and speaking.
The man is now in the hospital with undetermined head injuries.
I'm trying to envision this.  Was he walking down the tracks, directly at the train?  Was he walking perpendicular to the train, toward the side of it?  Another article says he was walking down the tracks.  That train engineer must have stood on the brakes not to have completely taken the old guy out.
The nursing home doesn't seem to be too broken up over one of their dementia patients, who should have been in a locked, alarmed ward, wandering off and almost getting killed by a train.  There's no mention of any family, unless the "unidentified" part means the family hasn't been notified yet.  The second article I found was only a few hours old and still says that.
I don't understand how, in the technologically advanced 21st century, how an old man with an addled mind managed to escape.  How difficult would it be to install, at every exit, RFID readers that also required a code.  If a patient learns the code, she still hasn't got the card, and if she's stolen a card, she (hopefully) doesn't have the code.  Employee's card is missing, immediately remove that card's number from access.

RFID chip and grain of rice

You can get something that works in reverse as well--you can get it for cat doors.  The cat door has a chip reader and your cat wears the chip on its collar.  Any animal without the chip can't enter.  So only your cat, not your neighbor's cat or a raccoon or a skunk or a family of hungry rats.  The one I linked to even works off the animal's already embedded RFID chip.  (Because if you love your pet, you'll chip it at the same time you get it fixed.) 
The embedded chip is the size of a grain of rice and there is no reason that it couldn't be embedded in a person.  They aren't tracking chips (not yet anyway) but they would work for doors.  I know Bible lovers think RFID chips are the mark of the devil but they need to get over themselves.  The first time a child or a mentally handicapped person or a dementia patient is found because of a microchip, their tune will change.  One would hope.

Screen print of first article.  Screen print of second article. RFID chip

Stick N Find Bluetooth Location device

I just found this product through a post on, of all places, the I Can Has Cheezburger (LOL cats) site.
If my dad was still alive and at home, I'd be Fry from Futurama: shut up and take my money.

Basically, the StickNFind is a tiny round sticker that you can place anywhere.  You use your i-phone or Android phone to track the location of the sticker.  If you lose your keys, for instance.  Or you can put it on your pet's collar, stuck to a tag.   Or your wandering dementia-ridden dad.  When you are within 100 feet your phone can find it.  If your phone can't find it, you can set up an alert that goes off when the tag comes within range, say, if you are driving around looking for said pet, or dad. 
The battery lasts for a YEAR and it's just a simple watch battery.  They are 2 for $50 and come in many colors.  And it's a one-time fee (except for the batteries), no monthly upkeep charges.
I've talked about GPS shoes and watches and things before, but this is very versatile.  It just doesn't have a great range.  For what it is, the price isn't outrageous.  The biggest hurdle may be the smart phone.  I only got an Android phone a few weeks ago, and there is no app for any other operating system except Android and i-phone.
You can use the app to make the sticker flash or buzz (if your keys are lost in the dark).
You can create a "virtual leash" which tells you if the sticker gets too far away from your phone.  This is for pets.  Of course if you aren't at home and your pet gets out of your house, that isn't very useful. 
The same company puts out a slightly bigger device called a BluTracker that has a range of half a mile and a battery life of 2 months (rechargeable).  The pictures it looks to be about the size of a package of dental floss.  It has the same features as the sticker, plus a little more. It can be pre-ordered for $70.

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Note:  This is NOT a paid advertisement, just a product I found that I think would be useful to the Alzheimer's community. 

173 Woman with AD killed in my town

This is really sad. I didn't know her, but she lived in my town.
The woman struck and killed while walking across Interstate 91 Monday evening has been identified as Patricia Carruthers of Wallingford....Carruthers was in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease and apparently had walked away from her home...sometime before 6 p.m. Monday...
(I)t appears as if Carruthers had wandered across the southbound lanes and into the northbound lanes, where she was hit by at least one vehicle, and maybe a second....
Carruthers, 63, was a former lawyer and a former teacher at Pond Hill School.
She held a bachelor's degree and master's degree in education from Southern Connecticut State University and had earned her law degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law in Hartford in 1989.
Just goes to show that keeping your mind active doesn't stop AD, does it?
(P)olice were still trying to determine the sequence of events in the accident.
Police said there were two vehicles involved -- a tow truck and a tractor-trailer -- but it is still unclear exactly what happened.

I can only hope that when the truck(s) hit her, she died instantly and never knew what happened. One second she was walking on the highway, the next my dad was greeting her at the door of the Elsewhere Bar. Say hi to my dad for me!
Screenprint of news article
Her obituary is online and it turns out I knew one of her sons in high school. I'd say it's a small world, but it's Wallingford, after all.