San Juan Capistrano : Missing Man Believed Seen; Hunt Intensified

Orange County sheriff’s investigators combed the area around a San Juan Capistrano mobile home park for the second straight day Monday in search of a missing 71-year-old man believed spotted there Saturday night.

A resident of the mobile home park said a man resembling Dreyfus Gardner, missing from a retirement home about three miles away, rapped at her door Saturday night but disappeared when she fearfully slammed a window shut.

Gardner was last seen at a San Juan Capistrano gas station Thursday night, several hours after he apparently wandered away from the Casa San Juan retirement facility. Though able to care for himself, Gardner suffers from periods of memory loss and disorientation, his family said.

Madaline Wagner, a resident of the El Nido Mobile Home Park on Ortega Highway, said she had not yet heard about Gardner’s disappearance when a man tapped gently at her door shortly after 7 p.m. Saturday.

Wagner said she lifted a small window in the door and peered out and the man leaned over and looked in. “We practically touched noses,” she said. “He had kind of a stare, a rather wild look, and it rather frightened me to have a face right in the window looking at me.”

Wagner said she at first received no answer when she demanded, “What do you want? Who are you? What is your name?” But then the man muttered something that sounded like “Gard . . . ,” she said.

Wagner slammed the window shut and eventually phoned the park manager, who conducted an unsuccessful search. She said she phoned the Sheriff’s Department the next morning when she read news accounts of Gardner’s disappearance. The man she saw was wearing the same blue jeans and plaid shirt Gardner was last seen in, she said.

“My heart is just broken, because I could have found him help immediately, had I known,” Wagner said.

Sheriff’s Lt. Dick Olson said a helicopter search of the area Sunday and Monday produced no results, though he called Wagner’s report “a good possible sighting, from all indications.”

Paula Story, Gardner’s daughter, said Wagner has offered to contribute to the $1,000 reward fund established for information leading to her father’s return, an offer that the family rejected.

Family members and friends have distributed more than 3,000 flyers seeking information on Gardner, Story said.