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LOS ANGELES — Janet Rivera cares for both her 79-year-old mother, who has dementia, and her 25-year-old son, who has a genetic condition called fragile X syndrome. Despite their differing diagnoses, both of her loved ones share a common symptom: They are prone to wander away from home and have cognitive impairments that make it hard to find their way back.
When she came across L.A. Found, a county program that distributes free technology to help locate vulnerable people with cognitive disabilities, it felt like a lifeline.
The county gave her son and mother each a wristband that emits a radio signal every few seconds. Were either of them to go missing, Rivera would call the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, which would switch on its monitoring system and track the signal from the missing person’s device.
She feels that the trackers preserve her loved ones’ freedom and independence, while reducing her fears that they could be hurt if she couldn’t immediately find them.
“You don’t know how much this helps us with our stress as a caregiver, for our peace of mind,” she told an audience assembled recently in downtown L.A.’s Gloria Molina Grand Park.
The event marked seven years of the L.A. Found program, and the addition of a new technology tool in the program’s arsenal.
Enrollees can now choose between two wearable devices: a radio transmitter wristband supported by the nonprofit Project Lifesaver, or a GPS-enabled smartwatch from technology company Theora Care that can be paired with an app on a caregiver’s phone.
The program, which also offers in-home safety training and other resources for families, grew out of Manhattan Beach resident Kirk Moody’s efforts to locate his wife, Nancy Paulikas, who went missing Oct. 15, 2016, while the couple were visiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
While Moody and family members searched the museum grounds, security cameras captured Paulikas — who had early-onset Alzheimer’s disease — walking away down Wilshire Boulevard. He received a call in December 2018 that remains discovered in a Sherman Oaks park were hers.
During his two-year search, Moody and the nonprofit Alzheimer’s Los Angeles began working with L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn and others on an initiative that became L.A. Found.
The service is available to any county resident with a diagnosis of dementia, autism or other cognitive disability that puts them at higher risk of wandering.
More than 1,800 people have since received a tracking device through the program, and 29 have been successfully located after going missing.
“No one has to go through this anguish and hopelessness and fear,” Moody said on the ninth anniversary of his wife’s disappearance.
Wandering is a common symptom of dementia and autism, though for different reasons.
The brain degeneration associated with Alzheimer’s disease typically starts in the entorhinal cortex, which helps track our position as we move through space, and then moves on to the hippocampus, which helps us understand where things are in relation to us.
As the disease advances, it becomes increasingly difficult for people to mentally track their own location, and recall where they intend to go or how to get back home.
People with autism may wander away from home or a caregiver to follow something that’s captured their attention, or to escape uncomfortable sensory stimuli such as noises or bright lights.
Studies have found that up to 60% of people with dementia, and 25% to 50% of people with autism, will wander or bolt at some point. These episodes can result in injury or death. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, children with autism in particular are often drawn to bodies of water while lost. An average of seven children with autism in the U.S. drown every month after going missing, according to the National Autism Association.
Most challenging for families is that many at-risk people can successfully bypass complicated systems of locks and security sensors, even while lacking the verbal or cognitive abilities to seek help once they are lost.
People have slipped away while surrounded by attentive caregivers, and even when families have taken extensive measures to ensure their safety.
Kate Movius has studied wandering extensively and trains first responders on supporting people with autism. She equipped her Highland Park home with a slew of locks and security sensors to protect her son with autism. Nevertheless, by the time she acquired a Project Lifesaver wristband for Aidan, who is now 25, he had gone missing several times.
“If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone,” Movius said. “You’re putting out so many fires as a caregiver, and (wandering) is not going to occur to you until you’re living it.”
This article was featured in Los Angeles Times by Corrinne Purtill on November 14, 2025
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