The El Paso County Sheriff's Office issued a missing person alert Friday morning for Elizabeth Mae Purdue, a 62-year-old white woman described as 5 feet 4 inches tall and about 160 pounds, with black and grey hair and brown eyes. Deputies say she was last seen wearing dark metal rectangle glasses.
The alert, posted to the sheriff's office social media account at 7:09 a.m. Friday, came from the agency's official account, EPCSheriff
. Notices like this one may also go out through
regional emergency notification systems
, which can push targeted text, email, and phone advisories to residents in a specific geographic area. Residents can register up to five addresses to receive alerts affecting their immediate surroundings.
No Waiting Period Required to Report Adults Missing
No Waiting Period Required to Report Adults Missing Colorado guidance cited by the City of Grand Junction says families or caregivers do not need to wait a set period before reporting an adult missing. The guidance emphasizes reporting a missing adult without delay.
Purdue's case falls under the jurisdiction of the El Paso County Sheriff's Office, which patrols 2,130 square miles and serves more than 740,000 residents across Colorado's most populous county. The agency, led by Sheriff Joseph Roybal, operates with more than 500 sworn deputies covering unincorporated lands and contract areas, according to the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. In Falcon, Hoodline has reported in coverage of a similar search on the role of county deputies in a search for a missing Falcon woman earlier this month.
Volunteer Search Teams and State Escalation Options
If ground searches are needed, additional search resources may be called on.
Should local efforts not turn up new leads, investigators have state-level tools available. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation can issue a statewide Senior Alert for missing people age 60 or older who are verified by law enforcement to have an impaired mental condition and face a credible safety threat; when those criteria are met, CBI can issue the alert. For cases that do not meet that threshold, investigators may consider other notification options. The article does not provide a figure for how many people in Colorado have been missing for longer than a year.
The sheriff's office has not released additional details about Purdue's last known location, whether she had access to a vehicle, or any medical or cognitive conditions that may have prompted the alert. Anyone with non-emergency information or a possible sighting is asked to contact the sheriff's non-emergency dispatch line at (719) 390-5555; life-threatening situations should still be reported to 911.
