Coping with dementia

Richard Maulorico could always find his way anywhere.

"He was like a navigator," said his wife, Kristine Maulorico. "Dick could do anything, drive anywhere."

Maulorico said she and her husband once got lost in Rome, Italy, while Richard was serving in the Vietnam War.

"I was reading the map," Maulorico said. "He said, 'Don't worry, I'll get us out of here."'

Her husband explained the "Russian Belt" technique he had learned in the Army while they cut across town and found the right road.

"He always knew where we were going," Maulorico said.

But life has taken them in a new and unexpected direction.

Richard Maulorico, 61, has been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia. It is a disease, originally called Picks, where the two frontal lobes of the brain gradually shrink. It affects language skills, decisionmaking and control of behavior, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Now, Richard Maulorico quietly walks around his home in Herriman with a permanent smile. He slightly hunches as he makes his rounds checking doors handles. They are all locked.

Like many brain diseases, a symptom of FTD is dementia, or memory loss, and those who suffer from it may have a tendency to wander, may become confused and then may get lost. Richard has fixated on walking, according to his wife.

"Before we had the locks put in the house," she said, "he walked right outside and into the neighbor's house. That was a shock."

Incidents such as these sometimes develop into more serious situations. Many people suffering from dementing diseases wander and are lost for hours or longer. The Alzheimer's Association says more than 60 percent of people with dementia will wander at some point.

Ten states — Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Virginia — have initiated a missing persons program, Silver Alert, patterned after the national program for missing children called Amber Alert. Each state has different qualifications for initiating a search, but each is designed to find adults who have not necessarily been taken against their will but wandered due to dementia or other medical reasons.

While Utah isn't one of the 10, it has, in addition to an Amber Alert for missing persons 17 years old or younger, an "endangered person advisory" that can be issued for any age.

"The state of Utah already has extensive training on the Endangered Person program," said Gina McNeil, the manager of the missing persons clearinghouse in Utah.

McNeil believes adding another alert, a specific Silver Alert, would likely confuse the public.

"The more you push on the public," McNeil said, "there's going to be a part of them that says, 'No more."'