An 87-year-old woman with dementia who spent decades as one of Cincinnati's most decorated public housing advocates has gone missing from her West End home, prompting an urgent alert from local authorities. Shirley Colbert left her home on Betton Avenue around 10 a.m., and anyone with information is being asked to call 911 or the Cincinnati Emergency Communication Center.
Colbert is described as 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighing 150 pounds, and she was last seen wearing a pink and white jacket with blue jeans, according to WKRC. The alert was issued for the missing 87-year-old, and residents in the West End neighborhood near the historic site of the old Laurel Homes public housing complex are being urged to keep watch for her.
For many longtime West End residents, Colbert's name carries weight far beyond this alert. In May 1991, she traveled to Washington, D.C. to receive the Individual Recognition Award from U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp, honored for her anti-crime and civil rights leadership as president of the Laurel Homes Resident Council, according to the Cincinnati Call and Post. She later served on the steering committee representing West End residents during the development of Plan Cincinnati, the city's comprehensive urban master plan adopted in November 2012, per the City of Cincinnati.
A Long-Diagnosed Condition in a Changed Neighborhood
Colbert's dementia diagnosis is not new. A 2023 federal civil court filing in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio documented that she had previously been diagnosed with dementia while living in the West End, according to records filed in that court. Betton Avenue, where she was last seen, sits near the former site of Laurel Homes, which was redeveloped into the City West housing community as part of the neighborhood's broader transformation.
The timing of her disappearance places her among a population medical experts consider especially vulnerable. Six in 10 people living with dementia will wander at least once during their illness, with many doing so repeatedly, according to the Alzheimer's Association. Research highlighted by the Cleveland Clinic indicates that nearly half of missing dementia patients suffer serious injury or death if they are not located within 24 hours of wandering, underscoring why rapid public notification matters so much in cases like this one.
How Ohio's Alert System Works
Ohio's Endangered Missing Adult Alert can be activated through the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation when a person is 65 or older or has a professionally diagnosed mental impairment that creates a credible threat of immediate physical harm, per guidelines from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Those alerts push descriptions of missing adults out to law enforcement databases, news outlets, and regional dispatch systems in hopes of generating sightings before time runs out.
Anyone with information about Colbert's whereabouts is asked to call 911 or the Cincinnati Emergency Communication Center's non-emergency line at (513) 263-8121, which also fields public tips on missing persons across Hamilton County.
Part of a Recurring Regional Pattern
Colbert's case is not an isolated one for the Cincinnati area this year. Just two days earlier, authorities in nearby Hamilton issued a similar alert for a 71-year-old woman with dementia who wandered away barefoot. Last September, Cincinnati police activated an Endangered Missing Adult Alert for a 78-year-old man with dementia who disappeared from the city, and in June 2025, Forest Park police issued a critical missing alert for a 67-year-old woman with dementia in Hamilton County. Cincinnati police also sought public help locating a missing dementia patient in Over-the-Rhine last November.
As of the initial alert, it remained unclear whether Colbert left on foot or by other means, and no additional details on a search grid in the West End had been released. Whether she has been located safely following the alert issued Thursday remains an open question that authorities have not yet answered publicly.
