At-risk 71-year-old with dementia found safe soon after reverse 911 call in Folsom

A missing, at-risk man was safely located about 20 minutes after Folsom police sent out a reverse 911 call Tuesday night advising nearby residents to be on the lookout.

David White, a 71-year-old man with dementia, had last been seen wearing a backpack and pushing a gray cart, and authorities had reason to believe he was heading to a wooded area, the Folsom Police Department said in a voice message sent to residents around 9 p.m.

White was found safe about 20 minutes after the reverse 911 call went out to residents near Folsom’s Broadstone neighborhood, Police Department spokesman Andrew Bates said Wednesday morning.

Bates said the reverse 911 system is widely used by law enforcement throughout Sacramento County, and gives “an extra set of eyes” that can be particularly useful.

“We have a system called reverse 911 that allows us to put out a message in a geographically limited area. So if we know we’re looking for a person in a neighborhood, our system allows us to send that auto-message to a specific area.”

Those auto-messages go to landlines and cellphones – whichever the Police Department has on record for a resident, Bates said.

“Not everybody is in that system,” he added.

It was not known whether the reverse 911 message played a direct role in locating White.

“We try to only use it when it’s necessary,” Bates said. “We don’t want to send repeat messages and annoy people. We want to use it only when it’s necessary to preserve life.”