The Search Packet Is Mostly Photos and Phone Numbers: Which Parts You Gather Yourself and Which You Can Hand Off

Most of a search packet is ordinary paperwork: a photo, a description, a few phone numbers, and a short note about the places she likes to go. An afternoon will get it done. What you need to decide is which parts only your household can gather and which parts someone else can do for you without losing anything.

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What only you can gather

Take the photo yourself, in daylight, facing the camera, with her glasses on if she wears them. Choose a picture that looks like her now, not the one from a celebration years ago. Write down what she was wearing the last time you saw her head out, her usual shoes, whether she carries a purse or a jacket, and any mark or way of walking that a stranger would notice. Name the places that have mattered to her across her life, such as a former workplace, a church, a park bench, or a store she used to walk to. Only you know these, so no service or helper can supply them.

Keep the phone list in your own handwriting: who to call first, who has a key, and who lives close enough to reach the house quickly. Write the house address with the nearest cross street, since a caller who is not familiar with the area may not know where they are.

What someone else can do for you

Printing, laminating, and saving a copy of the photo to a second phone can go to a print shop or to a helper you trust. A hired or in-home helper can also look over the packet from time to time and point out what is out of date, such as a phone number that no longer rings or a photo that no longer looks like her. A helper can add errands like buying a fresh card for the wallet or replacing ink to the list. What a helper should not do is decide what goes into the packet, because the choices about her description and her places belong to the family.

Medicines belong on the packet only as a single plain line noting that she takes them. The full list stays with you, kept in step with her doctor and her pharmacist. Do not hand that list to anyone else to sort or track.

Where the copies go

Keep one copy by the phone you already answer, one in the car if you drive her anywhere, and one with a neighbor you trust. Write a note on the copy at home that tells whoever finds it where the other copies are kept. Look at the photo again whenever she looks noticeably different, and check the phone numbers whenever one changes.

The Sources page lists the public guidance we used for describing a person to responders. For the steps in the first minutes, read Start Here: Dusk to Morning, in Order.