Family Gets Yule Wish: La Mesa Man Is Found

Disoriented and suffering from exposure, 56-year-old Paul Peterson was found late Friday sitting on a curb in downtown Tijuana, almost two weeks after the victim of Alzheimer’s disease drove away from his La Mesa home.

Peterson was listed in serious condition Friday night at Scripps Memorial Hospital-Chula Vista, said Diana C. Lucero, a hospital spokeswoman. He had become unconscious, was running a high temperature and doctors feared he had a blood infection, Lucero said.

But Peterson’s relatives, jubilant after 11 tense days of futile searching, said doctors predicted the La Mesa man would survive his ordeal, giving his wife and daughters their Christmas wish only one day late.

“It’s just something that I think is a miracle that happened,” said Peterson’s wife, Lydia, 48. “God worked through all these people. It finally happened.”

Mrs. Peterson described her husband as extremely dirty and having swollen feet.

“He was exposed to the elements,” said Peterson’s daughter, Anna, 20. “They don’t think he would have made it much longer if they wouldn’t have found him (but) we knew we were going to find him. Nobody falls off the face of the earth. Nobody.”

Peterson became the subject of an intensive manhunt after he drove away from his La Mesa home on Dec. 14 in his pickup truck.

Although he didn’t have any identification or money with him, his family was most fearful because Peterson suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, a degenerative condition that causes its victims to forget things.

Eventually, 200 relatives, friends and strangers joined in the search on foot for Peterson, and the family distributed 18,000 flyers with his picture and description in San Diego County and beyond, his daughters said Friday.

Newspapers and television stations also picked up the story and ran pictures of Peterson.

But the effort seemed to yield no results until Friday, when someone called the San Diego Police Department about 3 p.m. and reported that a man matching Peterson’s description was sitting in downtown Tijuana.

After receiving the tip, the department called Detective Ron Collins, its liaison with Mexican police. Collins, in Tijuana on other business, found Peterson sitting on the curb and took him to the U.S. Customs Service office at the border. There, Peterson was examined by paramedics and found to be suffering from exposure, said Bill Robinson, a San Diego Police Department spokesman.

Peterson was wearing the same clothes as when he left home, but he was without shoes, said another daughter, Leah Saunders of Mission Viejo.

She said that authorities believe his truck was in Tijuana and that he may have driven it across the border himself, although Lydia Peterson said there was also speculation that someone drove her husband over the border and then “dumped” him.

Mrs. Peterson said the mystery of where her husband spent the last two weeks may never be solved.

“We just will not know, unfortunately, because Paul will not be able to remember when he comes around, unless things are so traumatic that he can’t forget,” she said.

Late Friday, Peterson was transported to Scripps Memorial and was admitted to the intensive care unit with a temperature of 102 degrees. At the hospital, Peterson’s family met to rejoice.

At one point, Anna hugged a friend and burst into tears. And the man who phoned the San Diego police, T. J. Shelley, a San Diego truck driver, showed up to celebrate with the Peterson family.

“If he was never found, we wouldn’t have had another Christmas,” Anna told reporters later.

In fact, Christmas this year was just another day spent searching, said Mrs. Peterson. “We hardly noticed, really, that it was Christmas,” she said.

But with Friday’s news, she said, that all changed.

“I think we experienced Christmas much more deeply than most people did this year because of the help we (received),” she said. “From all sides, individuals and the media. Without all of these people, it wouldn’t have happened.”

Anna said that, despite the apparent lack of progress, the family never gave up looking for her father.

She and other relatives were talking about expanding their search throughout the country before they received a telephone call from a newspaper reporter Friday night saying that Peterson had been found.

While Peterson was located, another San Diego man was still missing Friday after he failed to return home from bowling in Lemon Grove on Dec. 10.

Family members said the man, Henry L. Foster Sr., 55, suffers serious memory lapses and is often disoriented because he had a stroke in 1984. They said they feared that Foster may have boarded a trolley to San Ysidro and crossed the international border.

“We hope that all the people who helped look for my father will now turn over and help the family find their father,” Anna Peterson said. “We know what their family is going through.”