Family grateful for Colorado police K-9 who saves missing woman with dementia

A Greenwood Village family is feeling relief after one of the police department's K-9s saved a woman who had been missing for several hours.

"It's really scary," Peter Holman.

That is how Holman was feeling moments after receiving a phone call from his mother's caretaker on May 2. His 85-year-old mother, Sandra, who suffers from dementia, had gotten out of the house and wandered off.

"She's got some mental impairments. She's got no water. She's not familiar with navigating her way back home," said Holman, who feared the worst. "Is she wandering into a road into oncoming traffic? Has she fallen and hit her head and she's unconscious somewhere? There's a creek that runs through the area. Has she fallen in the creek?"

Holman quickly went searching for his mother everywhere he could think of near her home, which sits against the Rollins D. Barnard Equestrian Park.

This was not the first time she has ever wandered out of her house because of her dementia; however, this is one of the few times Holman says his mother was scared.

"I rushed over and searched for two hours and couldn't find her. I finally called the Greenwood Village Police department, and they were amazing and got somebody out to the case," Holman said. "They said, 'You know what? We've got a K-9 unit. We're going to put the K-9 unit on this,' and I was like, 'K-9 unit? This sounds interesting.'"

Officer Austin Speer and his K-9, Mercury, responded to the call. They used clothing in Sandra's home to detect her scent. Then. Mercury went to work, navigating his way through the park towards Sandra.

"The dog worked brilliantly," Holman said. "I mean, it literally was like a navy seal extraction. I've never seen anything like it. It was something out of a Hollywood movie."

Mercury, who joined the police department a year and a half ago, was trained for this specific purpose in locating missing people as well as narcotics detection. Mercury spent roughly a few minutes combing the park before he found Sandra clinging onto a tree branch on a steep incline tucked away in the park.

"The dog came up and instantly comforted her, and Officer Speer was there, and he kind of helped carry her out of there," Holman said.

Holman says this rescue is a testament to how important units like this are in helping people in the community who need it most.

"I'd been all through this park, twice, maybe three times, and within 10 minutes, they had found my mom," he said. "She was scared but elated when she was rescued."