An 82-year-old man described by authorities as at-risk has been missing from Los Angeles' Glassell Park neighborhood since Thursday morning, prompting a statewide Silver Alert. Paul Cepero was last seen around 7 a.m. near Hazelwood and Lincoln avenues, wearing a white shirt, navy blue shorts, brown shoes and a blue hat.
The California Highway Patrol activated the Silver Alert on behalf of the Los Angeles Police Department, according to MyNewsLA.com. Cepero is described as 5-foot-11 and about 125 pounds, with gray hair and brown eyes. Officials say the alert system exists specifically to help at-risk missing people be located more quickly.
Under California law, the CHP only activates a Silver Alert when an elderly person, or someone who is developmentally or cognitively impaired, goes missing and is determined to be at-risk. That determination isn't automatic — per FindLaw, local police departments must confirm five mandatory criteria under California Government Code Section 8594.10 before requesting help from the state, including verifying that local search resources have already been exhausted and that the missing person faces genuine peril tied to age, health or environmental conditions. That an alert went out for Cepero indicates LAPD's Northeast Division cleared that bar.
How the Statewide Alert System Works
Once a request clears those hurdles, it goes to the Emergency Notification and Tactical Alert Center, a unit that operates around the clock out of CHP headquarters in Sacramento and serves as the state's central coordinator for reviewing local requests and activating alerts across designated regions, according to the California Highway Patrol. From there, CHP can help blast out Be-On-The-Lookout broadcasts, electronic flyers, Emergency Digital Information Service messages, and freeway changeable message signs if a vehicle is believed to be involved, per the same FindLaw breakdown of the statute.
The system traces back to Senate Bill 1047, signed in 2012, which added Section 8594.10 to the Government Code and gave the state authority to issue these emergency notifications. It was later expanded under Senate Bill 1127 in 2014 to cover cognitively or developmentally impaired individuals of any age, while keeping the 65-and-older threshold for seniors without a specified cognitive impairment, according to a historical summary from CalAlerts.org. In 2018, California became the first state to add actionable hyperlinks to Wireless Emergency Alerts for missing people, letting phone users pull up real-time photo flyers straight from a CHP notification.
Search Centered on Glassell Park
Cepero was last seen in the Glassell Park area, which falls under the jurisdiction of LAPD's Northeast Community Police Station. That station, based on San Fernando Road, serves roughly 250,000 residents across 29 square miles, according to LAPD Online. Anyone with information is being urged to call 911, and members of the public can also submit direct leads on adult missing person cases to LAPD's Adult Missing Persons Unit at (213) 996-1800 during business hours or through the department's 24-hour hotline.
It remains unknown whether Cepero has a documented history of cognitive impairment or prior wandering incidents, and LAPD has not detailed what specific ground search operations are underway around Glassell Park. The Alzheimer's Association notes that roughly 60% of people living with dementia or cognitive impairment will wander and become lost at least once during their illness, underscoring why authorities move quickly on cases like this one during the earliest hours after someone disappears.
Cepero's case is one of several Silver Alerts issued across Los Angeles County in recent days, following searches for missing seniors in Pico-Union, Inglewood, South LA and Huntington Park. Silver Alerts are one of six emergency notification programs the state runs through its Sacramento alert center, alongside AMBER, Blue, Feather, Ebony and Endangered Missing Advisories, each built for a different category of missing-person emergency.
