{"id":64464,"date":"2019-11-11T17:14:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T17:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-missing-elderly-cortez-man-found-safe\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T14:56:32","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T14:56:32","slug":"update-missing-elderly-cortez-man-found-safe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/update-missing-elderly-cortez-man-found-safe\/","title":{"rendered":"UPDATE: Missing elderly Cortez man found safe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Charles
Charles \u201cChuck\u201d Current has gone missing. He is 5 feet 10 and was driving a silver Subaru Outback.<\/span>Photo courtesy of Anne Current<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A 79-year-old Cortez man suffering from dementia was found safe south of Grand Junction early Saturday after he disappeared Thursday afternoon in is 2005 Silver Subaru Outback.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s doing better than I am,\u201d said Anne Current, wife of Charles \u201cChuck\u201d Current, 79. \u201cHe knows a little bit of what he did, but he doesn\u2019t know how far we went or what he did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anne said she found receipts for gas from Kayenta, Arizona, from Thursday, and for a motel in Mexican Hat, Utah, Thursday night. From Friday night, she found a receipt for gas from Pagosa Springs. She said he was stopped about 5 a.m. by a Colorado State Patrol trooper about 10 miles south of Grand Junction on Colorado Highway 50.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe must have driven all night Friday to get from Pagosa Springs to Grand Junction. We asked him where he slept, and he thought he slept at home Friday night. He must have napped in the car and drove all night. He remembers driving in mountains with snow at night. We\u2019ll never know where,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin said Charles Current, who suffers from diabetes and heart disease, was stopped early Saturday for weaving in traffic.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was fine, just a little dehydrated,\u201d Nowlin said. He was taken to St. Mary\u2019s Medical Center in Grand Junction.<\/p>\n

Taking the keys away from a loved is a difficult but necessary step to prevent people going missing and preventing potentially catastrophic situations, Nowlin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe freedom we have, the ability to go where we want when we want \u2013 it\u2019s a difficult thing to take away,\u201d Nowlin said.<\/p>\n

Anne said her husband was headed to his doctor\u2019s office in Cortez when he became disoriented.<\/p>\n

She said he has been diagnosed with late Stage 1 or early Stage 2 vascular dementia.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone was extremely helpful. We\u2019re grateful to search and rescue, the police and everyone who helped look for him,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m a big advocate for the silver alert. I don\u2019t know if they would have found him without that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anne said she plans to sell her husband\u2019s Subaru, but for now, it is parked at a friend\u2019s house out in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles \u2018Chuck\u2019 Current located south of Grand Junction<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":64465,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5738,5737,5736,5762,5735,5741],"tags":[21,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-64464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cortez","category-headlines","category-local-news","category-montezuma-county","category-news","category-newsletter","tag-cortez","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64464","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=64464"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91802,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64464\/revisions\/91802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64464"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=64464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}