An 81-year-old Purcellville man has been missing since Friday evening, and the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office is asking the public for help finding him before nightfall raises the stakes further. Raphael Dadzie was last seen around 5 p.m. on the 100 block of North 16th Street, wearing a baseball cap, a short-sleeve button-up shirt, and brown pants.
The appeal from the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office seeks assistance locating Dadzie and asks anyone with information to call 703-777-1021. The block where he was last seen sits near Purcellville Pointe Apartments, a multi-family residential complex adjacent to the town's central commercial district and within walking distance of East Main Street and nearby retail plazas, according to Purcellville Pointe Apartments.
Purcellville maintains its own 16-officer municipal police department for local patrol and initial call response, according to the Town of Purcellville. The Loudoun County Sheriff's Office separately maintains search-and-rescue and Project Lifesaver functions.
A Second Senior Search in Purcellville in August
A Second Senior Search in Purcellville in August The sheriff's office also issued a missing-and-endangered appeal for 81-year-old Carolyn Taylor on August 24, after she went missing from a Purcellville residence, as Hoodline reported in its earlier coverage of that search. The appeal included a public tip line for Taylor's case.
Purcellville, home to an estimated 8,895 residents in 2026 and situated roughly 25 miles west of Dulles International Airport, sits in a part of western Loudoun County where small-town blocks give way to expansive agricultural and wooded acreage, according to the World Population Review. That terrain can complicate search perimeters once an investigation moves beyond a residential neighborhood.
The Town of Purcellville says its current Comprehensive Plan was adopted in December 2006, looked ahead to 2025, and is now undergoing an update.
Specialized Assets and Legal Thresholds for Senior Searches
The sheriff's office maintains a dedicated Search and Rescue Team within its Operational Support Division and a Project Lifesaver function, per Loudoun County's official site. The office describes these functions on its Operational Support page.
The county also participates in Project Lifesaver, an electronic tracking program that equips enrolled vulnerable seniors with wristband radio transmitters detectable up to one mile on the ground and 10 miles from the air, according to Loudoun County information cited in research published by the National Institute of Justice. The equipment is intended to assist in locating enrolled individuals.
Under Chapter 7.2 of Title 52 of the Code of Virginia, state law authorizes a formal Senior Alert when a missing adult is over 60 years old, suffers from a cognitive impairment such as Alzheimer's disease or dementia, and whose disappearance poses a credible threat to health and safety, per the Code of Virginia. Before that alert can be activated, Virginia State Police guidelines require the investigating agency to enter the missing senior into the Virginia Criminal Information Network and National Crime Information Center databases, and to submit a photo to the Virginia Missing Person Information Clearinghouse.
Why the First Hours Matter Most
Roughly 60 percent of people living with dementia or Alzheimer's disease will wander away from safety at least once during the progression of their condition, according to the Alzheimer's Association, and that wandering can occur without prior warning even in people who have never left home unaccompanied before. Search-and-rescue research cited by the Cleveland Clinic found that nearly 50 percent of cognitively impaired individuals who wander away and are not found within the first 24 hours suffer severe injury or death, underscoring why investigators treat the early hours of a disappearance as critical. Those risks underscore why investigators treat the early hours of a disappearance as critical. Wandering can also lead people living with dementia to become lost or go missing unintentionally.
Loudoun County has handled missing-person cases in the past. In one prior case, Hoodline reported that the search for missing Loudoun County man Guy Ro DeMasellis stretched on for months before his body was ultimately found in an abandoned camper, with no foul play suspected. Anyone with information on Dadzie's whereabouts is asked to call the sheriff's office at 703-777-1021.
