Psychics Aid Hunt for Alzheimer Victim

Benjamin Jackson Lee Franklin’s daughters have distributed 1,500 flyers, organized neighborhood search parties and even consulted two psychics. But one month after he walked away from his Chatsworth home, the 81-year-old war hero is still missing.

Franklin, who was awarded a Bronze Star in World War II and now suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, left his house in the 9900 block of Rudnick Avenue on Aug. 2. He was seen at an ice cream store at Mason Avenue and Devonshire Street in Chatsworth and later sitting on a nearby bus bench.

But his daughter, Patricia Gillies of Tujunga, said she doubts that any bus picked her father up. “In his condition, he’d never attempt to get on an RTD,” she said.

In recent years, Franklin has lost the ability to speak clearly, dial a telephone or remember an address. “All he does is chuckle and laugh or break down and cry,” Gillies said. “He’s become very emotional.”

Mother Ill

Gillies and Franklin’s other daughters--Marlene Coast and Barbara Russell, both of Granada Hills--said the strain of worrying about their missing father has made their mother, Vivian, 77, ill.

The sisters said they have done everything they can. Search parties have been organized and flyers have been distributed from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Mexican border. They have called the Los Angeles Police Department’s missing persons section so often that they have been asked to limit their inquiries to one a day.

Then they went to the psychics. The first one said she couldn’t communicate with Franklin because “his mind was too confused,” Gillies said. The second psychic, Sonia, said Franklin “was traveling up the coast in a truck with another man,” according to Russell. The sisters will visit Sonia at her Beverly Hills salon again Tuesday.

There has been one unconfirmed sighting. On Aug. 17, a McDonald’s employee in Castaic called the Sheriff’s Department and said a man who looked like Franklin had just bought a hamburger. Deputies arrived after the man had left, Gillies said, but were unable to locate him.

Shopping Cart

Coast received a call a week later about a man who looked like her father who was pushing a shopping cart in Chatsworth. The man was there when she arrived, but it wasn’t her father.

“I knew my father wouldn’t be pushing a shopping cart, but I couldn’t be sure,” Coast said. “I hate to think that my father would look like a street person, but he’s been away for so long, that’s how he’d look unless somebody is taking care of him.”

Police officers investigating Franklin’s disappearance were unavailable for comment Saturday.

Russell’s frustration is turning into anger. She said she believes that her father has been abandoned. Franklin, a 27-year Navy veteran, was awarded the Bronze Star for carrying wounded soldiers to safety while under artillery fire during the Normandy invasion.

“We’ve exhausted every channel,” Gillies said. “Our only hope is the public. Maybe somebody will see his picture and tell us where he is.”