Abandoned Alzheimer’s Patient Traced to Oregon Nursing Home

An Alzheimer’s patient abandoned at a dog-racing track has been identified as a retired auto company worker whose daughter checked him out of an Oregon nursing home last weekend, police said Tuesday.

John Kingery, 84, was left Saturday night at the Coeur d’Alene Greyhound Park with a bag of diapers and a note identifying him as an Alzheimer’s disease patient. His plight elicited hundreds of calls from people as far away as Europe offering care, advice and clothing.

“There’s not many families that haven’t been touched by Alzheimer’s,” said Mike Regan, spokesman at the Kootenai Medical Center in Coeur d’Alene, where Kingery was taken. “People understand. They’re coming out of the woodwork.”

Police Chief Cliff Hayes said officials of two Portland, Ore., nursing homes where the man had stayed in recent weeks called to identify him after seeing his picture on a television news program.

Detectives hoped to talk with the man’s daughter, Sue Gifford of Portland, who checked him out of a nursing home Saturday morning, Hayes said. The case is being reviewed by the Kootenai County prosecutor, but there apparently is no law in Idaho covering abandonment of an adult, Hayes said.

Detectives were trying to find out how the man got from Oregon to Idaho and who removed labels from his clothes and wrote a note that was taped to his wheelchair, Hayes said.

Gifford, who works at a Portland ink company, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that “I put him in with Regency care center. I don’t understand what’s going on here.”

Asked if she knew how her father got to Idaho, Gifford said, “not for sure” but added that she “maybe” had a good idea how it occurred. She did not elaborate.

Kingery was moved three weeks ago from the Laurelhurst Care Center to Regency Park Living Center, both in Portland, the police chief and Laurelhurst administrator Hal Elliott said. An administrator at the Regency center said he would not comment until the man’s identity had been confirmed.