Search for Ill Man Continues : Alzheimer’s: Bob Fasig wandered away from a Ventura care home in May. Family hopes of finding him alive have faded.

As an Air Force pilot, Bob Fasig took part in the Berlin airlift, photographed experimental planes flown by Chuck Yeager and flew jets over Korea.

After he retired in 1964, Fasig was no less active. A skilled craftsman, he carved crochet needles for his wife, tinkered on cars and made oil paintings of Morro Bay.

So when the 72-year-old Fasig simply disappeared from a Ventura care home nearly three months ago, disoriented by Alzheimer’s disease, his family at first refused to accept that the once-resourceful man was lost.

“My father was a very capable person,” said Patsy Loew of Charleston, Ill., one of Fasig’s two daughters. “He could make anything and do anything.”

Since May 8--the day Fasig wandered away from the Mound Guest Home--his family has sought help from local police, Ventura’s homeless population and a psychic in Illinois.

They have also passed out hundreds of flyers in English and Spanish, scoured the streets and hills around Ventura and walked through an underground storm drain.

Despite their efforts, Fasig appears to have vanished without a trace.

“I think it’s the worst scenario that could possibly happen,” said his wife, Mary (Stubbie) Fasig, who lives in Atascadero. “Now I feel like we’ve thrown him away, like garbage.”

Fasig’s plight is not uncommon, said Niles Frantz, a spokesman with the Chicago-based Alzheimer’s Assn., a nationwide nonprofit group that offers support to Alzheimer patients and their families.

“Wandering is very common in early- and mid-stage patients,” he said. “It’s often born of the frustration and anger from the realization that they are afflicted. . . . To the family in particular, it’s extraordinarily frightening.”

In fact, when Fasig left the Mound Guest Home that May morning, just after breakfast, it wasn’t for the first time. Although he had been at the home less than 10 days, he had left two previous times and been returned by staff and police, according to family members and workers at the home.

The Alzheimer’s Assn. recently launched a new program they hope will improve the chances of patients being returned to their families. Called Safe Return, the program provides families with identification bracelets, clothing labels and wallet cards for Alzheimer’s victims.

Alzheimer’s affects an estimated 4 million people in the United States and is the fourth-leading cause of death among adults, according to the association. It is a progressive, degenerative disease of the brain that causes memory loss, personality changes, speech difficulties and confusion. There is no known cause.

Stubbie Fasig, 71, said she first detected symptoms of Alzheimer’s in her husband during a cross-country road trip from Atascadero to Illinois in 1985. He occasionally became disoriented and had trouble parking the vehicle, she said. Since then, his symptoms have grown progressively worse, she said.

In May, she brought her husband to the Mound Guest Home at 5430 Telephone Road, planning to leave him there for a few weeks while she had surgery for cervical cancer and a cataract.

“He didn’t want to be there,” she said.

Although the family once believed Fasig would be found alive, that hope has faded, they said. Now, they just want to find his body and answers to their questions.

“The not knowing is really the difficult part,” said Loew, who is the city clerk in Charleston, Ill., where her father was born. “We want to see he has an appropriate military service.”

After exhausting other leads, Fasig’s relatives are now pinning their hopes on the advice of a psychic named Greta Alexander who lives near Peoria, Ill.

According to Stubbie Fasig, the psychic has indicated he might have fallen into a barranca near the guest home.

“She’s indicated a specific area,” said Loew, who added that she did not want to disclose exactly what the psychic said.

To Fasig’s family, the psychic’s explanation is plausible because of his condition.

“He was not articulate,” said Charles Andrews, Fasig’s brother-in-law, who lives in San Luis Obispo. “If he fell and got hurt, his ability to attract attention would be virtually nil.”

Loew said she is now working with Ventura police and believes that renewed search efforts may soon bring an end to the mystery.

“I hope that this week tells the story,” Loew said. “I hope that we can bring all this to an end, because it’s been very trying for all the family.”

Ventura Police Cpl. Harry Scott, who handles missing-person cases, said Fasig’s disappearance is still under investigation.

Police have put out nationwide bulletins with Fasig’s description and alerted police departments and coroners’ offices along the California coast, Scott said.

Still, Fasig’s family said they’re frustrated that there wasn’t more of an effort made by police and officials at Mound Guest Home to find him in the beginning.

“If they’d have gone in with a search-and-rescue dog unit, the probabilities of success would have gone up substantially,” Andrews said.

Loew said she, too, was frustrated by the response to her father’s disappearance. “I’m not blaming anybody in particular, but I just feel there was a lack of procedure. It’s just incredible to me that this could happen.”

Scott said patrols officers did make an effort to find Fasig the day he disappeared, but without a strong lead police cannot call for a full-scale search because of the volume of missing-person’s reports they receive.

“Search-and-rescue isn’t utilized when you have absolutely no direction,” he said.

Rick Pitman, owner of the guest home, said staff members notified police that Fasig was missing as soon as they discovered he was not on the grounds.

Pitman said he believes Fasig made his final escape by scaling a 6-foot, chain-link fence and jumping onto some trash bins.

“Health-wise he was very physically fit, but his mind would go off and on,” said Mercy Porras, assistant manager of the home.