A 71-year-old man with a mental condition has been missing from a Cleveland care facility since Tuesday night, and police are asking the public to help bring him home. Frank Rowans was last seen around 7:40 p.m. walking away from his care facility on Worley Avenue, and officers have not reported locating him since.
Cleveland police described Rowans as 6 feet 2 inches tall and weighing about 150 pounds, with gray hair and brown eyes, according to Cleveland 19 News. He was last seen wearing a plaid shirt under a white trench coat, black jogging pants, and a fedora hat. Police have asked anyone who spots him to call 911 immediately.
The Cleveland Division of Police Fourth District covers the South Broadway and Slavic Village neighborhoods on the city's southeast side, per the Cleveland Community Police Commission. State records maintained by the Ohio Department of Behavioral Health show multiple licensed Class 2 residential care facilities operating on that same street, homes designed to provide supportive care for small groups of adults.
A Race Against the Clock
Cases like this carry added urgency because of Rowans's mental condition. The Alzheimer's Association has found that six in ten people with dementia or cognitive impairment will wander from their living space at least once, often repeatedly, as reported by LTC News. Data published by WebMD shows that cognitively impaired adults who wander face a 50 percent mortality rate if they aren't located within the first 24 hours of going missing.
Those stakes are part of why Ohio built a formal emergency alert system for cases involving older or cognitively impaired adults. Under Ohio Revised Code Section 5502.522, the state's Endangered Missing Adult Alert can be activated once law enforcement confirms a person is missing, is either 65 or older or living with a mental impairment, and faces a credible threat of immediate danger. The Ohio Attorney General's Office has reported that its Bureau of Criminal Investigation issued 146 such alerts across 38 counties in a single year, with all but one missing individual located or returned home safely.
Regulations Governing Care Facilities
State-licensed adult care and residential facilities, including Class 2 homes like those on Worley Avenue, operate under formal rules for exactly this kind of situation. Ohio Administrative Code Chapter 5160-46 requires these facilities to maintain elopement policies spelling out staff responsibilities and mandating immediate contact with law enforcement whenever a resident goes missing.
Missing person cases are not rare in Cuyahoga County. The county logged 2,717 missing-person reports in 2024, the third-highest total of any county in Ohio, Hoodline reported in earlier coverage of a separate case. Statewide, Ohio recorded 21,342 missing person reports in 2024, with local agencies successfully locating 96.5 percent of missing children, according to a report published through GovDelivery.
The Cleveland Division of Police, which patrols 82.47 square miles across five geographic districts with a force of more than 1,200 officers according to Wikipedia, is leading the search for Rowans. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to call 911 or reach the Cleveland Police Department directly at 216-623-5262.
