Lakewood Silver Alert Seeks Alan Salg, 73, Missing Since Saturday Morning

A Silver Alert is active for a 73-year-old Lakewood man last seen on foot near the intersection of Dalaman Avenue and Massinger Street on Saturday morning. Alan Salg was last spotted around 8 a.m. wearing a blue shirt and gray sweatpants, according to the alert, and authorities describe him as an at-risk missing person.

The California Highway Patrol activated the Silver Alert on behalf of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, according to a bulletin shared by CHP - Alerts. Salg is described as six feet tall, weighing 180 pounds, with blonde hair and blue eyes. Anyone who sees him is asked to call 9-1-1 immediately.

The neighborhood where Salg went missing sits in Lakewood's 90715 ZIP code, a suburban stretch of single-family homes built in the late 1950s near the borders of Long Beach, Hawaiian Gardens, and Cerritos, per Redfin. Public bulletins have not specified whether Salg has a diagnosed cognitive condition, and his exact direction of travel or possible destination remains unknown.

Local Deputies Lead the Ground Search

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department's Lakewood Station, headquartered at 5130 Clark Avenue, provides contract law enforcement for the city and typically leads searches like this one across south Los Angeles County, per the department's own description of its Lakewood operations. Deputies working missing-person cases in the area also have access to Sky Knight, a continuous aerial law enforcement helicopter program based out of nearby Long Beach Airport that has operated since 1966 as the nation's first program of its kind, according to background compiled on Wikipedia.

Under the sheriff's department's internal policy, investigators are required to exhaust local search resources, including ground canvasses and aerial tools, before requesting that the CHP broadcast a Silver Alert across multiple counties. That escalation ladder means the statewide alert for Salg reflects a search that had already moved beyond an initial local canvass.

Why California Treats These Cases as Urgent

California's Silver Alert system dates to 2012, when Senate Bill 1047 established the statewide notification program and codified it in Government Code section 8594.10 to cover missing people age 65 or older determined to be at risk. Senate Bill 1127, effective in January 2015, later broadened that eligibility to missing individuals of any age who are cognitively impaired or developmentally disabled.

Once a local agency files a report on an at-risk missing person, state law under Penal Code section 14211(e) requires the report to be entered into state and national law enforcement databases within two hours, feeding systems used for cross-jurisdictional matching. Requests for statewide alerts are then evaluated around the clock and issued by the CHP's Emergency Notification and Tactical Alert Center in Sacramento, which manages freeway message boards and social media notifications.

The Stakes of a Wandering Senior on Foot

Research from the Alzheimer's Association indicates roughly 60 percent of people living with dementia or memory loss will wander from home or caregivers at least once during their illness. Separate research cited by the Cleveland Clinic found that up to half of missing individuals with cognitive impairments who wander on foot and are not located within 24 hours suffer serious injury or death, a statistic that underscores why authorities move quickly on cases like this one.

Salg's disappearance is one of several Silver Alerts issued across Los Angeles County in recent weeks, including cases involving missing seniors in Panorama City, Palmdale, Reseda, and North Hollywood. Anyone with information on Salg's whereabouts is urged to call 9-1-1.