With Elk Grove man, 77, missing for a second week, family pleads with mayor for help
Find him: For two weeks now, from the day he walked away from his west Elk Grove neighborhood the morning of Aug. 9, that has been the mission of the dozens searching for 77-year-old Kiflit Ghebremariam.
In front of Elk Grove City Hall Wednesday, 16 days after he vanished, more than 30 of Ghebremaniam’s family and friends directly pleaded with Elk Grove’s mayor to treat the missing man’s disappearance with more urgency.
Ghebremariam is at risk. He has dementia, likely why he wandered away from his home near East Taron Drive in Elk Grove’s Stonelake neighborhood, his family says. He needs medication.
For days now, the description posted to social media and printed on fliers has been tacked to light standards and supermarket bulletin boards:
Black male, 5-foot-8, 170 pounds and bald with a white mustache. White shirt, dark blue pants, black tennis shoes.
“It’s going on two weeks. We really want to bring urgency to the case. He’s a father. He’s a grandfather,” said Sawait Hezchias-Seyoum of Elk Grove. “We need to bring more awareness because somebody has seen him.”
Singh-Allen, who also lives in the Stonelake neighborhood that Ghebremariam calls home, reassured the missing man’s family that Elk Grove police and the search teams brought to assist are on the job.
Searchers have scoured the sprawling Stonelake wildlife refuge that backs up to Ghebremariam’s neighborhood, Singh-Allen said. The mayor added that she was briefed earlier Wednesday by Elk Grove Police Chief Timothy Albright on the ongoing search effort and promised family members a meeting with Albright as early as Thursday on where the search stands.
Singh-Allen also issued a plea of her own to the public to call with any tips.
“They’re working around the clock. He went missing in my neighborhood. This is where we need the help of the community. Please call. There’s nothing that won’t be explored,” Singh-Allen said. “I see my own grandfather through him. We need everybody’s help right now. It’s all hands on deck.”
Ghebremariam’s family and the many in Elk Grove’s small but deeply connected East African community and beyond who have joined in the search are working in the present tense — hoping, 15 days on, to bring him safely home.
“A lot of people from the Bay Area have come. Family from Denver and Boston and Dallas. People are coming to help us,” daughter-in-law Tsegha Belay said on Tuesday. The retired businessman helped many in Boston’s Eritrea immigrant community get their businesses off the ground, Belay said. “He’s helped so many people. They want to give back what they were given. People are shocked to see this.”
Hezchias-Seyoum said Wednesday she and others in her community want to see that same sense from city leaders.
“We’re from East Africa, we’re an immigrant community, and the part of our experience that is unique is that everyone comes out. We want to see that,” she said. “It’s family first, not just brother, sister, father, mother — it’s the sense of responsibility we find in one another. It’s why we’re pressing our leaders and the police.”
Every morning and again in the hours before dusk they search, 60 or more at a time on some days in groups of two and three, wherever the tips lead: a Nugget Market shopping center on Elk Grove Boulevard and Bruceville Road; a Walmart on Whitelock Parkway; across town on Sheldon Road and Elk Grove-Florin Road. A half-finished subdivision on Poppy Lane. A Chevron station on Big Horn Boulevard and at Oasis Community Park off Whitelock Parkway.
“We were even told he was in Rancho Cordova,” his son Michael Kiflit said Tuesday.
Elk Grove police dispatched a helicopter that first evening that Ghebremariam failed to come home, the pilot flying low over neighborhoods, shouting out the missing man’s description over the chopper’s loudspeaker.
Days later on Aug. 16, Elk Grove officers joined by Sacramento County, Yolo County and California Rescue Dog Association searchers later embarked on a deeper search of the Stonelake area and beyond with no luck.
The city and private businesses have shared traffic and security camera footage. Sightings continue to come in that give the family hope.
In the latest, from Aug. 20, a woman reported a man who fit Ghebremariam’s description miles from his Stonelake home at Gerber Road and Stockton Boulevard.
Ghebremariam loves to walk. When he was healthier, Kiflit said, he would often walk for miles north up Franklin Boulevard to Mack Road and back. His family wonders now if he made a similar south-to-north trek or if, confused, he headed east toward central Elk Grove and still further east.
Kiflit has begun to use a drone, the better to survey neighborhoods, open spaces and the network of creek beds and drainage canals that criss-cross the city.
“We’re doing all the work we can,” Kiflit said. “It’s been really tiring. We’re tired — mentally, physically. We are tired.”
But, he added later, “People saw him at Oasis Park, so that’s our office now.”
On Tuesday night, Kiflit, his wife, Tsegha Belay, and the search party met underneath the large shade structure at Oasis Community Park off Whitelock Parkway where they traded the latest leads, pored over Google maps showing possible sightings and spreadsheets listing locations, grabbed new stacks of fliers and waited for their assignments.
“We’ve looked everywhere from Elk Grove to the border of Sacramento. Some people went into downtown,” said family friend and the group’s mission planner Michael Sebhat as he penciled out search rosters from a park table.
Tuesday evening’s group numbered about 15, a mix of businessmen and women, shift workers, family and friends, some who had just driven in from the Bay Area. After a quick briefing and handshakes of encouragement, an impatient “Let’s go,” came from one of the searchers.
The group broke off into twos and threes. They would fan out again to city parks and shopping centers, walking neighborhoods and combing creek beds and construction sites to find their friend.
“It’s like my dad, because my dad had the same symptoms,” Helen Berhane, one of Ghebremariam’s neighbors, said at Elk Grove City Hall Wednesday. “It’s emotional, because, if it was my dad, he’d be hungry, tired, confused, trying to survive. But we don’t think about (being) tired. We’re going to find him. That’s what we think about. Every single day.”
This story was originally published August 25, 2021 at 1:54 PM.
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