Clairvoyant Offers Clues in Search for Alzheimer’s Victim

The search for a missing 56-year-old Alzheimer’s victim entered its eighth day Monday as family members and scores of volunteers intensified their efforts to find the man, who had left his home to drive to the family business.

Paul Peterson was last seen Dec. 14 in his 1978 Toyota, said his daughter, Leah Saunders, 23. She said about 130 volunteers were searching near Grossmont Union High School and elsewhere in the La Mesa-El Cajon area after a woman claiming to be a clairvoyant telephoned the family Monday morning and told them that she had connected Peterson to visual sightings of campus grounds and a redwood pagoda, and had smelled fish.

As a result, Saunders said, family members went to the La Mesa-El Cajon area after they recalled that a high school and two restaurants called Anthony’s Seafood Restaurant and George Joe’s, a Chinese restaurant with a pagoda-like structure, were near each other. A former business partner of the missing victim told the family that before acquiring Alzheimer’s disease, Peterson would often go to Anthony’s Seafood Restaurant.

A command post, which previously had been set up in Lakeside, was moved to the Parkway Plaza Shopping Center in El Cajon.

Contacted at her home in Chula Vista, Maria Burruel said she was watching the news Sunday night and saw a report on the death of her niece, Ricki Ann Blake, when it was reported that Lydia Peterson, the wife of Paul Peterson, was once the girl’s schoolteacher.

Blake, a 14-year-old junior high school student, was found murdered in April a few hours after she was reported missing from her home. There have been no arrests in the case.

“I miss Ricki Ann,” said Burruel, 48, adding that she has had this mental phenomenon since she was a child. “I talk sometimes to Ricki Ann, and when I talked to her last night, I asked her to help me find this man.”

On Monday morning, she said, the images came into her mind.

She called to tell a friend who suggested that she immediately call the family. “God gave me this, and I don’t know what it is,” she said. Burruel said she was diagnosed by a doctor as having “paranormal psychology.”

The family was conducting its operation from a motor home, and with the help of the El Cajon Police Department, they were able to get a Pacific Bell emergency crew to install a phone in the vehicle Sunday. The family has offered a $1,500 reward for information leading to Peterson’s safe return.

Mark Saunders, 23, the husband of Leah Saunders, said that five volunteers from the National Guard and three sailors have joined the search group, which has grown from about 30 volunteers Friday to about 130 Monday.

“They’re mostly strangers, and most of them aren’t here for the reward,” Mark Saunders said. “They’re not even interested in it, and they won’t even take the reward.”

Anyone who has seen Peterson is asked to call the La Mesa Police Department at 469-6111 or the family’s command post at 440-9654.