{"id":29599,"date":"2024-01-22T20:16:19","date_gmt":"2024-01-22T20:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/73-year-old-man-goes-missing-in-mesa-verde-national-park\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T06:59:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T06:59:51","slug":"73-year-old-man-goes-missing-in-mesa-verde-national-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/73-year-old-man-goes-missing-in-mesa-verde-national-park\/","title":{"rendered":"73-year-old man goes missing in Mesa Verde National Park"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Spruce
Spruce Tree House at Mesa Verde National Park. (Courtesy Mesa Verde National Park)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A man went missing in Mesa Verde National Park last week, according to a missing person alert from the Colorado Bureau Investigation.<\/p>\n

Thomas Irwin, 73, was last seen in the park wearing a gray fleece jacket, blue jeans and tan hiking boots at around 1 p.m. Jan. 15. Law enforcement has recovered his vehicle in the park.<\/p>\n

\"Thomas
Thomas Irwin<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

According to the release, Irwin suffers from a cognitive impairment that may cause him to be easily confused. This condition requires him to take medication he may be without.<\/p>\n

Montezuma County spokeswoman Vicki Schaffer told The Durango Herald <\/em>on Monday that the National Park Service was conducting its own search and rescue mission with help from K-9 Search and Rescue out of Dolores.<\/p>\n

\u201cMontezuma County Search and Rescue is not involved at this point,\u201d Schaffer said. \u201cThey were put on standby for a day last week. But then the majority determined that they did not need ground teams at that point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mesa Verde National Park Chief of Interpretation & Visitor Services Kristy Sholly told the Herald<\/em> on Tuesday that search and rescue teams were searching all over the park.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had lots of air efforts by fixed wing, helicopter and we brought in a specialized dog team,\u201d she said. \u201cThere just haven\u2019t been a lot of leads.\u201c<\/p>\n

Sholly said rescue teams believe that Irwin was in the area of Petroglyph Point Trail because his phone was found in the area and had been turned in to the visitors center.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe believe that he completed that hike, and we\u2019re not sure what happened after that,\u201d she said. \u201cSo we don\u2019t think he necessarily got lost during that hike.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added there was nothing out of the ordinary about Irwin\u2019s car when law enforcement found it. The car was left in the park overnight, which is against policy at Mesa Verde, sparking suspicion that the man was missing.<\/p>\n

Most of the search efforts so far have been along Chapin Mesa in the main areas of the park. Sholly also said that there have been multiple helicopter flyovers in the park\u2019s canyons.<\/p>\n

She said the search will continue and that the park service search teams are hopeful.<\/p>\n

Anyone with information about Irwin or his whereabouts is asked to call 911.<\/p>\n

tbrown@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Missing person\u2019s vehicle has been discovered by law enforcement<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,173,1130,60],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-29599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-mesa-verde-national-park","tag-missing-person","tag-montezuma-county"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29599"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80797,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29599\/revisions\/80797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29599"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=29599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}