Man With Alzheimer’s Vanishes : Missing persons: He disappears in Washington state during a visit to son. His wife in Bellflower holds out hope that he’s trying to reach home.

Birdie Tiemeyer believes that somewhere between the Canadian border and Los Angeles, her 65-year-old husband is steadfastly pedaling a bicycle--unaware that he is lost, knowing only that his home is to the south.

Hank Tiemeyer, who 10 years ago began suffering the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, disappeared six weeks ago while visiting his son, Gordon, in the rural northern Washington town of Lynden.

The longtime Bellflower resident, who has become so debilitated by the disease that he is hard-pressed to remember the name of his friends, has been spotted as far south as Seattle--about 100 miles south of Lynden--asking for Gordon, but apparently not telling anyone he is lost.

He disappeared on June 25 as he was riding his daughter-in-law’s bicycle from a nearby strawberry patch to his son’s home.

“I figured he knew the way because we had walked the same way every day for three days, but he missed the turn,” Birdie Tiemeyer said. “I saw him go straight up the hill, and I ran after him.”

By the time she reached the crest of the hill, her husband was nowhere in sight, she said.

“There just wasn’t a trace of him,” said Lynden Police Chief Jack Foster. In the hours after Tiemeyer’s disappearance, search teams from several neighboring police and sheriff’s departments, as well as hundreds of volunteers, scoured the area. They found nothing.

“It’s baffling,” Foster said.

Last week, Birdie Tiemeyer returned home to Bellflower after five fruitless weeks of searching and waiting. Tiemeyer and her four children and other volunteers have posted flyers at rest areas, restaurants and anywhere else they think Hank Tiemeyer may have passed.

“People hear about him being gone, they talk to his children, they see his picture, and they say, ‘That could be my dad.’ They feel for the family. It could be their dad,” said Martin Hamstra, an Everett, Wash., resident who has used his radio station to coordinate the search.

“There is a real desire to find the guy,” he added. “We have had airport shuttle drivers who routinely drive the route Hank may be traveling, on the lookout. We have GTE drivers looking. Pastors have sent out their congregations. We have over 10,000 flyers blanketing the 100-mile stretch between Lynden and Seattle, and still no Hank.”

In the first week after his disappearance, Birdie Tiemeyer, who is offering a $20,000 reward to anyone who finds her husband, said she was besieged with calls from people claiming to have seen the tall gentleman wearing a blue button-up sweater and blue cap pedaling a women’s blue bicycle in different parts of the area.

On the night of his disappearance, he apparently went to a restaurant on the far side of Lynden and had something to drink. Then he left, saying he had to find Gordon, Birdie Tiemeyer said. He was reportedly spotted on Interstate 5, at a mission in Everett, in a residential neighborhood in Seattle.

“At first, the phone rang so much. All day and into the evenings,” Birdie Tiemeyer said. “Now there are hardly any calls.”

Still, Birdie Tiemeyer is convinced that her husband of 42 years is safe and still riding south. Hank Tiemeyer, she said, has always been a determined man.

“When he’s got something in his mind that he is going to do, he’ll do it,” she said. “He is a very persistent person and that is why we feel he is still out there plugging away. As long as his health and the bicycle hold out, I believe he is still heading south.”

Tiemeyer was wearing dog tags that identify him, and was carrying his California driver’s license, as well as a slip of paper with his son’s phone number. “But he just doesn’t know enough to ask for help,” Birdie Tiemeyer said.

Dr. William Bondareff, a USC professor of psychiatry and gerontology who specializes in Alzheimer’s disease, said that, sadly, such disappearances are all too common.

“They do disappear and they can turn up anywhere,” Bondareff said. “It’s kind of amazing how far they can get.”

Bondareff said some Alzheimer’s patients appear to be functioning normally. “They sound like they know what they are talking about,” he added, “but if you really listen to them, you can tell they are not making any sense.”