Rocklin Man, 68, With Alzheimer's Found Safe After Bid to Hitchhike to Danville

A 68-year-old Rocklin man with Alzheimer's disease who vanished on foot Friday morning, telling a store employee he planned to hitchhike roughly 80 miles to Danville, was found safe later that night. Michael Fitzgibbons had no working cell phone, no credit cards, and no vehicle when he disappeared, prompting the California Highway Patrol to issue a Silver Alert spanning five counties before canceling it once he was located.

Fitzgibbons was last seen near Tree Swallow Circle and Frog Hollow Place in Rocklin, according to a Silver Alert shared by the Rocklin Police Department, which retweeted the California Highway Patrol's regional alert covering Placer, Sacramento, Yolo, Solano, and Contra Costa counties. The alert asked anyone with information to call 9-1-1. Fitzgibbons was found safe Friday night, and CHP subsequently canceled the alert, according to SFGATE.

A Trail That Led Toward the Bay Area

Before he disappeared, Fitzgibbons reportedly told an AT&T store employee on Crossings Drive in Rocklin, at around 11:30 a.m. Friday, that he intended to hitchhike to Danville without a phone, cash, or car, per a report attributed to LegacyUpdate. That detail helped explain why the search stretched across a wide swath of Northern California rather than staying confined to Rocklin, since a hitchhiker on foot could plausibly cross several county lines in a matter of hours.

The wide geographic net reflects how Silver Alerts function differently when a missing person has no vehicle to trace. Because Fitzgibbons wasn't traveling by car, CHP relied on Be-On-the-Lookout broadcasts, electronic flyers, and social media posts through its @CHPAlerts account rather than the overhead freeway signs typically used to circulate a license plate and vehicle description, according to CalAlerts.org.

The Legal Threshold Behind a Silver Alert

California's Silver Alert system is governed by Government Code section 8594.10, enacted in 2012 through Senate Bill 1047, which allows law enforcement to request a regional alert for missing individuals 65 or older, or those with cognitive impairments, once local resources have been exhausted and the person is believed to be in peril, per FindLaw. The law was later expanded in 2015 to cover cognitively impaired adults of any age. Every Silver Alert request in the state is evaluated around the clock by staff at the Emergency Notification and Tactical Alert Center, or ENTAC, housed at CHP headquarters in Sacramento, which serves as the clearinghouse for six separate state alert systems, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Wandering is a common and serious risk for people living with Alzheimer's disease. Six out of 10 people living with dementia or Alzheimer's will wander away from home at least once during the course of their illness, according to the Alzheimer's Association, and that behavior can occur suddenly even in familiar surroundings.

Rocklin's Third Missing-Senior Search This Month

Fitzgibbons is the third senior reported missing in Rocklin this month. Earlier in August, Placer County authorities searched overnight near Secret Ravine for an 81-year-old man and issued a separate statewide Silver Alert for another 81-year-old who had been driving a truck; both cases ended with the men found safe, as Hoodline reported earlier this month. A similar case also played out in neighboring Sacramento County, where Elk Grove police sought an 83-year-old missing driver.

The cluster of cases lines up with local demographic trends. Placer County's senior population already exceeds 85,000 residents aged 65 and older, or roughly 20.5 percent of the county, well above California's statewide average of 15.7 percent, according to federal health data from the National Institutes of Health. The county's Public Health Division has projected that residents 65 and older will surpass 120,000 by 2030, making up about 26 percent of Placer County's total population, based on a 2020 county report that also cited the local Healthy Brain Initiative aimed at dementia-friendly planning.

Under California Department of Justice guidelines, police departments must accept missing person reports without any mandatory waiting period and must prioritize missing-person cases over property crime investigations when an at-risk individual is involved. Anyone with information related to future missing-person cases in Rocklin can contact the Rocklin Police Department at (916) 625-5400.